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I had to think about whether I wanted to give 1 star or 4 stars (I love it, but still very disappointed). I bought this book thinking that I'd be able to make any recipe because I had an open mind. I knew that I'd have to research and find unheard of ingredients. And I knew about the risk of the controversial Carageenan ingredient. What I didn't know is that some of the processes require a cool atmosphere...40-50D F. I live in the tropics, and even with our cool winter this year, we didn't get much cooler then 68D. Well, I gave some of these recipes a try anyway. They came out pretty sour. Not nasty tasting, but strange. I have a strong stomach and never get sick with food so I can only guess weather a food is spoiled. I made a vegan cheeseball from a recipe I found online, also requiring culturing, and also coming out too sour. I emailed the chef and asked whether this means it has spoiled. She said No and that if the sour is too much for me, then just add more blended cashews. So I figured that this was a similar situation and that it wasn't spoiled, so I continued eating it. About 2 weeks later after being in the fridge (it's supposed to be good for 4 weeks), I noticed something small and brown, and it looked like it moved. I wasn't sure weather my eyes were playing tricks on me or if gravitation made it move, but I poked at it, and it looked like it moved again. I just kept staring at it, and poked at it again, but no more signs of movement. I was grossed out of the thought that this might be a living creature, so I broke out the magnifying glass to try to be sure. Sure enough, there was a very defined body and head, like a slug. I cut up all the pieces of the cheese to see if there were more. There wasn't but I was still grossed out enough to throw it all out anyway.
I decided to not just give this one star because there's quite a few other recipes that I tried out that didn't require culturing in cool temps, and they came out great. But I'm still going to knock off 1 star for this because I feel a little gypped that I can't try out all the recipes. Something like that should be forewarned. In fact, the 40-50 D requirement isn't even mentioned within the recipe instructions. It just says to culture in cool room. The 40-50D rule is buried somewhere in the Intro that I happened to read. Sure, I could go out and buy an A/C to make these recipes , even though A/C's aren't really common where I live, but even that probably won't work. My house have very poor insulation, which is also very common here because temps here are so mild. Cold air from an A/c would just go right outside.
In response to the reviewer who said that almost all the recipes are the same because a lot of the ingredients are the same, in all fairness, the same can be said with dairy cheese. Just one unique ingredient can make a huge difference in taste. For instance, 2 of the cheeses I made had a lot of the same ingredients (about 5 or 6). But one had sauerkraut and the other had nutritional yeast and miso. They both tasted very different.
With all that said, this book is definitely worth trying out for the vegan who loves and misses dairy cheese. The auther is a chemist. It's not everyday that a chemist is passionate about mixing ingredients and testing out different processes to make vegan cheese taste like its dairy counterpart as much as possible.
As far as the carageenan scare, I'd recommend to avoid this book for this reason ONLY if you go out of the way to read ingredients of the processed foods you buy at the store and ask the cooks/managers at all the restaurants you eat at. There are so many foods that have this ingredient, that adding a bit more in your home cooking, I can't imagine it doing any extra harm. I've had quite a few of these recipes with this and I didn't feel sick. Of course, I hope there's no long term effect, like cancer, but in all reality, we're faced with cancer-causing elements everyday. Our immune system fights it off so I think and hope that as long as you keep healthy, you'll be fine.
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![Artisan Vegan Cheese by [Miyoko Schinner]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51M65L+kbNL._SX260_.jpg)
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Holy Cowless! Amazingly Tasty Cheese!!!
Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2013
Let me preface this by saying that I am not a vegan, but I am extremely lactose intolerant so milk-based cheese of any kind is absolutely verboten. It was an awful thing, to finally come to terms with the fact that I cannot eat cheese. I loved cheese. I was a milk-fed girl and spent decades in uncomfortable denial before I decided I just couldn't do that to my digestive tract anymore. So I cut out all milk products, all cheese and, in the process, eliminated most of the foods that I loved most. My diet was a pretty bleak terrain for a while. Then came Ms. Schinner.I was complaining about the lack of tasty lactose-free cheese one day and a friend recommended this book. I promptly ordered it, made a batch of Rejuvelac, then made the basic cashew cheese, then made the lemon peppercorn chevre from that. This stuff is seriously tasty, and I have found its perfect pairing -- endive points. That, in my opinion, is a morsel worthy of amuse bouche status in the finest restaurant.My goal is now to have at least one of these cheeses in my fridge at all times. Next, I plan to make the gruyere, and then maybe some ricotta. My mind is spinning with the possibilities!Thank you, Ms. Schinner!Update: I've now made the soft Gruyere several times, one of them to bring it as a cheese fondue to some foodie friends' dinner event. Everyone thought it was delicious, even one of the hosts, who told me that he never likes "tastes like" products, but this was seriously good. The texture wasn't quite that of a melted milk cheese fondue but who cares! Next time I make it, I'm going to experiment with adding kirsch and other traditional fondue ingredients so I can fool even the most discerning foodie.
Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2013
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