It was quite pricey ($11 for a small wheel), but I’m willing to pay a premium for a high quality product crafted merely from almonds, salt, enzymes, and cultures. Having read about these “game changing” cheeses all over the vegan mediasphere, I was thrilled to find their Soft Ripened Almond Milk Product in my local Whole Foods. The pet project of vegan chef Tal Ronnen of Crossroads fame, this company has created a huge buzz over the past year or so with the release of a line of almond-based cheeses that bear an uncanny resemblance to their dairy counterparts. My husband T, for example, could not even stomach a bite of Treeline, reporting that he found it excessively sour and chalky, and absolutely nothing like cheese.Įnter Kite Hill. Folks who still eat dairy, though, do not seem to be very enthusiastic. Personally, I am a huge fan of these products and find that, while they don’t resemble any particular dairy cheese, they are rich in umami and effectively scratch the itches I get for a salty, complexly flavored glob of creaminess to spread on bread. Cow and Treeline were the only players in this market, at least here on the East Coast. In the last few years, though, the vegan community has begun to dabble in making real cheese with nut milks by culturing and fermenting them in the same way dairy has been for centuries. Put differently, Daiya is just flat-out fake. It’s also a hyper-processed mixture of mysterious, quasi-natural substances, each trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to mimic a different aspect of cheese’s natural flavor and texture, without having anything in common with the real thing. Daiya, the so-called vegan rock star, may be a decent imitation of processed cheese and can convincingly stand in for Velveeta, but it’s not exactly at home on a platter with Marcona almonds and quince paste, if you know what I mean. Over the years, I’ve tried most of the vegan “cheeses” out there, with mixed results. Every once in a while, though, I find myself longing for the days when I could make a meal out of a hunk of cheese, a baguette, and a crisp apple. When I discovered cashew cream and nutritional yeast, though, I pretty much stopped even thinking about it. Once upon a time, like most folks who go vegan, I could scarcely imagine life without cheese.
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