Faking It

At a Scottish festival this summer, I was tempted by a can of vegan haggis. It ended up going home with me ... even though I already had at least two recipes for vegan haggis in cookbooks at home. There's something irresistible to me about the idea of veganizing such a veg-unfriendly dish. (For those not familiar with it, my dictionary describes haggis as – and readers with delicate sensibilities may wish to skip the next line - "a Scottish dish made of the lungs, heart, etc., of a sheep or calf, mixed with suet, seasoning, and oatmeal and boiled in the animal’s stomach.")

Vegetarians seem to have two schools of thought about such "meat" products as vegan haggis. Some dislike them. For some, it's simply that the flavor or texture isn't appealing. In that case, there's no sense arguing with taste.

Others have more philosophical objections to faux meats, and here, controversy can bloom. The reasons have some merit. Why try to imitate meat, some wonder, when the vegetable kingdom offers so much to enjoy? Others are squeamish about them – they feel so strongly opposed to the cruelty inherent in meat production that they don't even want imitations of it. And, there is the concern that it gives ammunition to militant carnivores, who can argue that vegetarians face such privation that they must turn to pallid imitations to be able to bear their austere diet. "I could never be a vegetarian," they say. "And why even try? – Even the vegetarians crave meat!"

Still, I'm a fan of these fakes. Tony Weston, the creator of one of those vegan haggis recipes mentioned above, states the case succinctly in his Taigh Na Mara Cookbook. "If something tastes good and it's not caused harm to anyone or anything in its production then I can find no logical reason to deprive yourself of another flavour in an extensive range of healthy flesh-free alternatives," he writes.

And I've found that faux meats can be a way to introduce friends to the vegetarian lifestyle and show them that it can be as comfortingly familiar as they could wish. One of my favorite dishes of all time is Munro’s "Chickenly" Pot Pie, which uses Smart Menu "Chick'n Srips" from Lightlife in the filling. Recently, an omnivorous friend declared "I want to be a vegan!" after a few bites of this pie.

What side of the faux-meat divide do you find yourself on?