Vegan Cheese Please

 As any vegan or even vegetarian home chef will tell you cooking without cheese can be daunting. It figures in almost every dish, from French onion soup to pizza. Then there's the charcuterie platter which demands a variety of cold cuts and cheeses. Luckily there are more and more vegan cheeses out there to fill this gap. Better still, they actually taste just like their dairy counterparts.

Regular contributor and California restaurant critic for the New York Times wrote about this in the Critic's Notebook section of today's New York Times Food section. Vegan cheese has undergone a vast transformation in the past decade. Cheese is always the hardest food to give up. There's something about the tanginess of cheddar or the creamy goodness of Brie.At one time those non dairy kinds could not hold a candle to them. However that's all changed. The newer generations of packaged cheese is now more convincing, thanks to being produced in roughly the same way as regular cheese is. They're made from cultured plant based milks that develop texture and flavor. Companies that are leading the way are the smaller, more artisan Blue Heron Creamery of Vancouver, the Herbivorous Butcher in Minneapolis and Vtopian Artisan Cheeses in Portland Oregon. There is also Philadelphia's Conscious Cultures Creamery and the famed nationally known Miyokos.

Conscious Cultures Creamery owner, Stephen Babaki has made Barn Cat , a Camenbert , inoculating the surface with various strains of Penicillium candidum which is typically used to ripen Camembert and Brie. it's then aged for two to three months. Some work , some cheeses take more time to perfect. Miyoko Schinner, who first published  the how to Artisan Vegan Cheese, created her early ones with homemade Rejuvelc - sprouted fermented grains filled with probiotics and lactic acids. She researched her book by taking cheese making classes and studied the ways traditional cheeses were made. She experimented in her San Anselmo California  kitchen , giving her kids samples. She then opened up an alternative dairy business, Miyoko's Creamery that's sold all around the country. she is not without competition but she is a pioneer in the industry. A decade ago she couldn't even get what she called "culture houses" companies that sold cultures to take her seriously. Now there are vegan cheese makers everywhere.Aaron Bullock and Ian Martin started Misha Foods, in part to help African Americans eat healthier. They made alternative cream cheese from cashew milk, one of the most popular milks used by vegan cheesemakers. Denise Vallego makes vegan Mexican cheeses, in part from being inspired by Ms. Schinner. Then there is Kristen Maitland and Frank Zwar of Rebel Cheeses in Austen Texas  who recreate all sorts of cheeses and came up with a Cheddar Brie hybrid.

Now vegans can rejoice because there are actual cheeses for them. They can indulge with Brie smeared on crackers or a grilled cheese. It's time to celebrate again with a big wedge of cheesy goodness.