How Vegan Wonders of the World came to be
About getting better at cooking.
Do you think this is a joke? Cooking is an art. And I am an artist. - Marco Pier Whyte
Two years ago, I discovered the joy of cooking for others. Growing up, my mother was an excellent cook, but I never took the time to learn from her. As a result, I arrived at university with minimal skills in the kitchen – I only learned to cook rice about two days before leaving home. In fact, despite all the progress I've made since then, I still struggle with cooking rice properly.
To add to the challenge, I decided to turn vegan. This meant I often found myself eating meals alone, uncertain about what to create in the kitchen. Although many Indian dishes are vegan by default, relying on them became slightly repetitive and boring. Moreover, cooking Indian food is by no means quick or easy, despite what those '30-minute easy Indian dish' recipes claim.
My flatmates at the time weren't particularly enthusiastic about the idea of sharing dishes containing tofu and soya chunks, which limited my opportunities to experiment with new recipes on a regular basis.
As a result of my limited cooking skills and the lack of enthusiasm from my flatmates, I struggled to maintain a committed vegan lifestyle for long stretches of time. The cravings for cheese toasties and chicken shawarmas would often overpower the unsatisfying and repetitive meals I prepared for myself.
However, living with a fellow vegan has transformed my cooking experience this year. My flatmate, Jack, is an incredible cook who excels in every aspect of cooking, except for curries. This is the first time I've lived with someone I know well, and it has had two significant impacts on my life. Firstly, I have felt far more comfortable with my living situation, which has made me less self-conscious when in the kitchen. Secondly, and more importantly, Jack is pretty eager to have meals together, which means I am cooking a lot more for him, our guests, and myself! This newfound passion for cooking has sparked a journey of documenting the food I make, pushing me to try new things and expand my knowledge of food and cooking techniques.
Experimenting with more types of vegan food this year has pushed me down the path of discovering ingredients I hadn't tasted or really experimented with before – nutritional yeast, MSG (which is very contentious amongst people – some argue I use too much of it, but I say there's no such thing!), cashew cheese, adding alcohol to food etc. It has also led me to create some truly awful dishes, which I would recommend doing when you're just cooking for yourself.
Through this process, you discover things like how 1/2 teaspoon of cumin can sometimes be too much for dishes outside of Indian food, and that maybe, just maybe, there is such a thing as too much MSG. But this is what it's all about – making mistakes and learning from them! I think I was a bit too comfortable cooking things I knew, and I didn't really understand what it felt like to express myself through cooking.
It's been wonderful to have my friends around and cook for them – this is probably another key way I show affection or a good sign that I like you!
Tangent: Giving up meat
I was a pretty avid meat eater when I was young, and it is probably something that is going to take a while to wear off. Luckily, a bunch of other vegans have the same problem, and so there are many recipes for trying to make tofu taste like meat or cooking seitan.
TVP (textured vegetable protein) is probably the easiest meat alternative. Simply rehydrate it in vegan chicken or beef stock and cook for 8-10 minutes to get a quick and fairly cheap meat replacement.
Here are a few tips for making seitan:
Use nutritional yeast to help relax the gluten, giving it a more meaty texture.
Vital wheat gluten has a strange taste on its own. Season your seitan dough with garlic, onion granules, smoked paprika, and other seasonings of your choice (maybe some MSG?) to help reduce that flavour.
Grilled Tofu - While it doesn't really taste like chicken, it's a good quick alternative.
The dish pictured above was Mongolian Beef, with the beef made from seitan. It is one of the highest-rated dish in our ranking system! The stars must have aligned that day because I don't think I've been able to replicate such success since.
I am going to try and finish a cookbook by the end of the summer. It will be a fairly low-effort book made in Canva that compiles all the pictures and recipes I've learned. I'll probably put the PDF up here and try to see if I can print a few copies. Here's a sneak peek of the cover!
