17Jan

New vegan meats!

I love little more in life than delivering news of the vegan meat variety.

And this is a dang fine batch of news.

Gambardeli is the company name for Margaret Gambardeli, the maker of some incredibly fine looking vegan meats.

Margaret makes all of her products lovingly in her own home kitchen, packs them up and sends them to devoted customers all over the UK. I could tell you a lot more about Margaret but I think her words carry more weight than mine ever could:

I grew up in a small farming, fishing town in Scotland. I became vegetarian as a teenager when I moved to Essex and then macrobiotic. Although not a vegetarian or with a vegan philosophy, I saw macrobiotics as a way of not using any animal products and started finding recipes based on grains, beans, vegetables, sea vegetables and fruit. I qualified as a teacher of macrobiotics in 1986. I brought my children up on this diet and I have been eating in this way ever since. Back in the day, I used to make my own tofu and even skin creams!

Margaret continues with details of her unique meat-free products that she developed herself:

My products are seitan style but not to the usual recipe as we didn’t quite like seitan, so I adapted the recipe to suit our tastes. I have a ‘joint’, steaks, strips, slices and thin slices all made from the wheat flour and a small amount of soya sauce. My medallions have the addition of a little vegetable oil. I have an Italian sausage with the addition of nutritional yeast with B12, chickpea flour and fennel. We are experimenting with different herbs and spices to offer alternative flavours. I use organic flour and naturally brewed soya sauce – all of our products are GMO free and I avoid palm oil.

And what about getting the products to you in your house?

I vacuum pack the products and freeze them to send them out to customers in insulated bags. I sell the products from our on-line shop at www.gambardeli.co.uk, at vegan fairs where it is very popular in a wrap with salad or as a filling for pasties, and at Farmers’ Markets where I sell the packs.

How about a Veganuary deal for the readers, Margaret?

As a special Veganuary offer, anyone buying 3 packs of steaks from our website will get two packs of our new sausages completely free.

And what if people own a shop or market stall?

I would like to supply shops, cafes, restaurants and caterers with our products – even people who have or would like to have their own vegan food stall at a market can buy from us wholesale.

These seitan-similar steaks look absolutely incredible and you can never have too many vegan sausage brands in your life, either.