How can I replace meat without loosing taste?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions. People do not seem able to cope with the idea that you can feel fully satisfied without a meaty meal. Let’s take for instance the hamburger as a concept. Everyone would immediately wonder about a dripping saucy round object made with minced beef meat, instead...

Concept woolen burger

...instead a burger is something more conceptual. Burger derives from hamburger, which comes from the city of Hamburg. So technically it just means something done following the Hamburg fashion whatever it is. 
So, I will attempt a double observation. The first one is that we all have to free our minds from preconceptions. Meat very often works as the laziest choice, yet many preparations are actually tastier and more creative. The following picture summarises wonderfully the idea:

clever provocative campaign in Germany on Der Veggieburger 

The second consideration takes EmilyDickinson in. I know that plausibly the ravishing model Emily Ratajkowski (after all her nakedness) would have been a better hook to fish attentions for my argument, but Emily Dickinson has a different touch:

Portrait of Emily Ratajkowski

She (Emily Dickinson) meditates on the very food of the soul, which is the chance to taste the divine with ecstasies of stealth. Beyond the religious metaphor, the authentic food is that responsible nourishment we deal with throughout questioning where it comes from and how much it did cost to be what it is:

J1651 (?) / F1715 (?)

A Word made Flesh is seldom


And tremblingly partook


Nor then perhaps reported


But have I not mistook


Each one of us has tasted


With ecstasies of stealth


The very food debite


To our specific strength -

The best part of each of us, our specific strength, if I read the poem correctly, has the chance to perceive this authentic food and sense fulfillment, without falling down again the easiest choices. We all dwell in possibility, the human inner condition of seeing things from different and magnified perspectives:

Finally, I wish to put before your curiosity a superb recipe, which involves simple ingredients (I found the ingredients in Carrefour and Naturalia):

• muffins anglais (to know more);
• organic spelt burger (épeautre); 
• 1 organic chestnut mushroom (cut horizontally);
• organic mixed salad;
• organic brie (or another French creamy cheese);
• neither salt nor pepper.

what are they? muffin anglais,
but it is very likely they are a sort of French scone,
147 kcal per bun

Toast the muffin and let the brie melt on top of the burger,
which was gently fired with this savory chestnut mushroom

Here we are, voilà et bon apetit

Amount of calories: considering all the ingredients involved, the kcal are surprisingly 450 per burger.
Cost: around 2,50€/3€ per burger.
Time: between 4 and 6 minutes. 2/3 for each side of the burger.

The new wave: being vegetarian and why

Living in Paris affects your life. It is not Paris of course, it is always you: the idea you have of Paris kicks the change in, because you have to challenge it. Something dormant within myself came out.

Monumental graveyard of Montparnasse

How was my Paris? A stupendous idea taken from books and films, I was utterly wrong. Paris drove a slightly different kind of mutation, something intimate: a sort of secular revelation. I could not stand any longer the cultural idea of not being able to see pigs, cows, horses and chickens simply as we look at cats, hamsters and dogs.

I felt a sense of love and belonging without boundaries:

Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII,
a matter of love that prevailed on duty.

When I came to this conclusion, the alleged necessity of enjoying eating the flesh of other sensitive beings had vanished. I went through a series of refurbishments of my inner Self and I ultimately became vegetarian (neither industrial meat nor venison nor fish nor insects):

Roy Lichtenstein, pop art,  Centre Pompidou, Fall 2013

My diet became more essential, and somehow more creative. I had to cope with an absence, which imposed to my creativity to be more alive. Every absence makes us stronger. It took me a while to figure out how to communicate all this new deal of impressions on the blog.

I hope i won't ever slip into being a vegetarian-taliban. I don't despise nor hate who clutches to a carnivorous alimentary regime: the process of respect toward animals is a slow march of self-determination. When you find yourself, you do not need an external sacrifice to prove you are alive. For me, it has been as lowering down a mask.

Tribal mask, in rue Bonaparte (close to Saint Germain de Pres)

Now, I know better that my editorial line should be less involuted and more straight to the point, something more inspirational. Enjoy then the ideas that gradually sprang out from my mind:

Tofu steak cooked on a pan with extra-virgin olive oil, capers and garlic,
then dressed with creamy organic balsamic vinegar.
Side it with crunchy salad and roasted peppers,
all sprinkled in Chia seeds