Raise your hand if you can relate to this attitude. Yes, that’s right, it’s the mother-in-law, the friend’s husband, the new boyfriend, that person who has been raised on a bog standard diet of meat and two veg, and doesn’t believe there’s an alternative. Period. It’s that person who thinks all vegetarians eat are rice and lentils, a dull and bland diet with no colour nor attitude.
You and I both know they’re wrong, but how to prove it?
I want non-veggies to like veggie food, and many times I feel the mock products on the market are a poor introduction to veganism or vegetarianism for a number of reasons. First they engage the mind in thinking of substitutes rather than learning new methods and making new choices. Second they are often a poor representation of what they claim to mimic. This doesn’t mean the alternatives are poor in flavour, but that you can’t replicate steak with tofu (just as you can’t replicate broccoli by dying cauliflower green- okay, bad example, but you you get my point).
In no way am I putting down meat alternatives; I simply think it’s sometimes better to introduce an omnivore with something a bit more colourful, and that’s my point of focus for this post.
It frustrates me when someone crafts a recipe and names the end result after a type of meat of which it is about as representational as Paris Hilton is sincere. I mean, come on guys. It’s been many many years since I’ve had meat and I don’t recall its flavours all that well, but even I know batter frying tofu doesn’t make it a scallop. Why not call it batter-fried tofu?
Alas, comparisons have to exist and for this I am grateful. I love my Quorn “chicken” products and I still maintain veg sausages are better. Facon never ceases to make me happy and scrambled tofu can come darned close to eggs. A good vegetarian mince kicks the arse of beef and I have had many meat-eaters agree on this point. I list all of these foods to illustrate there is a threshold at which the claims become ridiculous. It’s one thing to call a Quorn roast a substitute for your chicken roast, but another to stretch tofu to shellfish.
Don’t get me wrong, because I use meat alternatives. You’ll even find recipes on this blog which use them, or make vague representational claims. You will not, however, find me relating cauliflower to shrimp, aubergine and mint sauce to lamb.
Really this doesn’t matter. It’s petty and relatively insignificant, right?
But here’s the thing, and I think most veggies would agree: I want non-veg people to try and to enjoy veg food for what it is and for all its possibilities.
I have met omnivorous individuals whose faces twist into a fit of disgust when I mention being vegetarian. Why? Partly because they can’t conceive of the variety we eat, partly because they have tried replacing their Sunday roast with a crap substitute, partly for a mix of these and other reasons. These are the people who want to give it a try for health reasons, people who aren’t convinced and are ready and susceptible to finding a reason to confirm a pre-conceived view of a veg diet consisting purely of bland lentils and rice. Maybe they want to confirm to themselves it’s best to go ahead and avoid change.
This is, as veggies, our hardest audience to please. Remember, these are individuals who probably repeat meals fairly frequently and have a limited repertoire of kitchen concoctions. These are, again, those who have eaten meat and two veg meals their entire lives. People who think homemade chips (french fries) are a gourmet treat.
So don’t we make more of an effort? Wow them!
Why not introduce people into vegetarianism and veganism with something that truly represents the possibilities? Go buy yourself a copy of Veganomicon or one of the Millennium Restaurant cookbooks and surprise the doubtful in-laws with a three course vegan meal to die for. Don’t grill a slab of tofu and serve it to them as “steak.” The only result that will achieve is a mother-in-law who lives in worry of you starving her poor, poor child.
