Delicooks

A vegan is more than a vegetarian.

> www.hiulitscuisine.com

He had a pierced nose and became vegan about the same time. Color tattoos cover his skin, but on his clothes dominate black. He loves tomatoes and, in general, red food. His favorite color is green, but he doesn’t wearing them.

Do you eat many tomatoes? What do you feel when you eat one?
Hmmmmmmmmmm. Recently I attended a course in food energy and they told me that is not convenient to eat tomatoes. Others will tell you that do not eat fruit…at the end everyone has to believe their own ideas. And I love tomatoes.  

Why vegan?
(Straight Edge is a lifestyle and a youth movement that started within the hardcore punk subculture, which his followers make a commitment for life to refrain from drinking alcohol, using tobacco products, taking drugs and be promiscuous.)

It was a direct reaction to the sexual revolution, hedonism and excesses associated with punk culture. For some, this extends to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, avoid caffeine or take medications.

The term Straight Edge was created by the band Minor Threat in the song of the same name in the 1980s. They started the Positive Youth movement. They dressed in sweatpants and promulgated  positivism. They were street kids who decided to not take drugs or smoking and adopt a mode of natural lifestyle. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

I knew people who listened to this music: fast, strong, short notes, high noise, but the most important thing are the lyrics, which are shouted and take out the anger inside you. And that’s what I like it. I like the noise and loud music in general. Positive Youth Movement, by means of shouting, came to a philosophy of self-control: I want always to know what I’m doing and so I am aware of my actions. This is the same regarding the respect to the animals.

What about Hiulit term?
It comes from Hewlett Packard, an American surname. At age 17 was when I started to go to the concert-style Straight Edge, a name that my childhood friends were not able to pronounce. One of them invited me to come out one day and I told him I was going to one of these concerts. My friend was angry with me and started to rant and rather than say Straight Edge, said hewlett packard. To me it made me laugh and finished adapting and adopting the name: hiulits.

Do you feel that be vegan have you moving away from your friends?
You open your eyes one day and everything changes. But life is like this, and there are things that others do not understand or respect.

Are you quiet or restless?
The truth is that I consider myself a stray bullet. I can’t be + than a year doing the same thing, because if I don’t like it I get tired.

But you don’t get tired with the kitchen….
No never. Now, I have seen also that the food comes through our eyes and I have to try to take care of the aesthetic, this is something that I have to learn. This is also my challenge and I'm on it, both for the presentation of the dishes and the quality of the photos.

How do you replace the traditional flavors?
No, I don’t substitute them. What I do is to introduce new ones, and the result is magnificent. People say that I lose flavors, but they also miss many other things. In this country, unfortunately, we have a very routine Mediterranean diet…fish and meat, and little else. Others think that we eat always the same, but isn’t. What happens is that there are many things that I don’t eat.

And what if I ask you for a vegan menu?
For starters, a salad with avocado, tomatoes, lettuce, alfalfa or bean sprouts, brewer’s yeast, which is great for everything, seasoned with soy sauce, oil, salt, vinegar…anything you want.

After that, a few tender green beans with boiled potato and a battered seitan, which is considered a meat substitute…
 
But the truth is that in a vegan menu, you lose a little sense of a first and a second dish, everything becomes one. In fact, I do not use the seitan, which in origin take us back to the meat without being it, just like a second dish…
 
Is take substitutes not a way to trick the conscience?
Yes, that is something that comes from society, and so the first and second dish, and hence the invented breaded seitan which is like a steak that is not of animal origin. I try to cook with its own identity, starting with its own flavor, which has nothing to do with the meat.

So much use of substitutes leads me to envision a difficulty in-disengaging from meat, sausages, cold meat…How do you understand that?
 I use it more than for those who ask you, for example, what is seitan, in which case I say that it is wheat gluten and I explain its properties, that are especially proteins, which brings us to the meat, although in reality it is better because it has no fat, but for someone who eats meat is a form of position it, and their color helps to use this argument. In fact, if you stop eating bologna is for something and end up eating a bologna that is not it‘s a little bit absurd.

You would say that who decide to become vegan is doing consciousness, but it takes a body adaption…
 And there is some that take that to the extremes, even the feelings of the vegetables….If everybody would stop eating meat, all would revert to its natural cycle, although that is very difficult. People ask many questions because they are poorly informed, people don’t know the deplorable conditions in which animals live and they are slaughtered for consumption. The first time I saw a dairy farm, they told me that they lived happily and with music, but who are you kidding...? what about their own gas? This is the most important polluter. I prefer that there are no cows instead to have to eat them. We have no right over animals, and our higher level of intelligence does not give us the right.

Have you identified any other characteristic that can join the vegans apart from the animal subject?
I've only met two vegans who do not know how to cook, all other do. Yes. It may be that the great difficulty in Spain toe at our way that forces us to learn.

Until a year ago I didn't know there was a vegan cheese, there was an alternative, like sausages, including vegetable duck. I discovered in Berlin this alternative world, although it is not my way to work, I consider myself more natural. There are other environmental issue also is present. If weren't for cows and pastures, we would be devoted to the cultivation of cereals… or to go towards the ecological rather than to the GM. Another issue is that eating organic is Spain is very expensive.

When you make a meal for your friends, what do you most listen to?
Some people have never tasted anything vegan and never will try it, but one day I cooked an omelet for my grandmother without eggs, I did not tell her and she asked me for the recipe!
 
Are you started to collect recipes, create your own recipes?
Yes, but what I want to convey is the idea of opening the refrigerator and do what you can with what you have. If you use eggplant stuffed, you use what you have in the fridge at that time to fill them. It is very easy, very economical and very simple food. To me the High Cuisine is not….If I investigated I’ll keep to myself.

And in your fridge, what you usually have?
I have tomatoes, avocados, onions, zucchini, mushrooms…

How do I make an eggless mayonnaise?
Then, you put soy milk, sunflower oil, a bit of lemon and, occasionally, if you want, a garlic. And it curdles perfectly. Its main feature is a sweetness that reminds biscuits.
 
Actually there are many foods that are cooked exactly the same and only varies the ingredients.
What I really like is cooking simple. I avoid the additives that unfortunately are in many vegan foods. For this reason I try to do everything myself.

In this day and age how can you reconcile cooking yourself with the fast pace of our lives?
I do not have time also, but I try whenever I can. You can organize yourself despite all that implies. In any case, don’t forget the possibility of food to take away, if is in a bike, better. And for 6€!
 
Recently I have started to collaborate with Vegetales a pedales (Vegetables on pedals) that make vegan cuisine at home and to continue the line of naturalness they take the food to your home by bike. It is a way of closing the ecological cycle. Though my dream is to have my own vegan homemade restaurant “casolá” of my mother and my grandmother, which are those that have taught me and they are my original inspiration. And I want it in Gràcia, my district since always.

What is your next step?
Speak with the neighborhood centers and propose them a workshop to learn how to eat vegan. I want that people know those unknown tastes, and what a vegan is through the food, which is where best fit, amb la pancha plena tot entra mes fácil (with a full belly, everything is more easy). The little things I know is because I have researched and I continue to learn and share it through my website.
 
I also want to make a community, and for this I’m going to develop a restaurants guide, a vegan friendly.

I want to come back and live in Berlin. From there I like everything: the city, the environment, people and their freedom, and they don’t look at vegans wrong or as we are strange.

There may also be people that simply don't comprise to a term…
It’s not necessary to put a name, but if you don’t put one yourself, the others are those who label you. A vegan is more than a vegetarian.