Session:vegan replacements

Hacking Food Traditions

We want to share our favourite ways to satisfy our cravings for childhood-memory-food through vegan substitutes. We won’t cook that much but, share and taste visions and experiences.

Come, if you want to share your favourite substitute, bring a sample or recipe.

Come, if you search for a vegan alternative for your favourite dish and pose a challenge.

Some substitutes might be commercial products that really make you happy (there are not so many out there) and some substitutes are easy to make recipes you found online, tested and refined.

Why replacements?

Why mimic animal products? Doesn't that oppose the whole idea of being vegan?

The memory of the “Kalbsnierenbraten”/veal loin roast of my grandmother still makes me cry, but I would never cook that. Most of us have been raised as omnivores, maybe have later been socialized as vegetarians but therefore still have a strong connection to childhood food. In times of global food chains, soy-fodder and factory farming and constant protein poisoning, there is just no point in any animal product.

Still, [insert item] is what brings me happiness, it [insert item] was an important way to communicate caring and love, [insert item] is what makes me feel at home or is the "buen vivir"/good life I want.

And then there is also the “challenge accepted”-momentum of creatively exploring possibilities along the boundaries of everyday cooking.

How to influence the taste, smell or texture of a dish or the feeling it transports or a similar feeling of being full afterwards? Which traditional food processing methods can be reapplied, reinvented, and what additional ingredients can we take from modern food technology, while keeping our standards.

And beyond that, what kinds of new tastes, dishes and traditions can we create after freeing ourselves from the long-established bonds to the non-vegan original.

Some dishes for which we think great substitutes exist are (incomplete list):

camembert, gorgonzola, melted pizza mozzarella, cheese spread, feta, yoghurt, whipped cream, sunny-side-up-eggs, scrambled eggs, mayonnaise, macarons, wedding cakes, zabaione, pork-lard, turkey roasts, smoked trout, pulled pork/jack

Link to official Self Organized Session at 33c3 wiki