Loftus David - East: 120 vegan and vegetarian recipes from Bangalore to Beijing

Made in India

Fresh India

120 Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes from Bangalore to Beijing

Photography by David Loftus

Art Direction by John Hamilton

Illustrations by Monika Forsberg

For John Hamilton (19632019)
I feel so lucky that our paths crossed

V: VEGAN

VO: VEGAN OPTION

Quick dinners

Meeras favourites

Best for breakfast

From the cupboard

Picnic perfect

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Life can change in an instant, like mine did with a phone call.

Thats how I felt when Melissa Denes, an editor at the Guardian, rang me. She said they were introducing a new vegan column into the weekend magazine and she wanted me to write it. In my most private moments I had dared to dream about writing a column, but I never seriously thought it would happen. As I weighed up the options, I realized there were a few small problems.

For a start, I wasnt vegan.

Secondly, up until that point, I had only written about Indian food.

Thirdly, Id just had a baby who was a few weeks old. Not only had life just been thrown into chaos with her arrival, but Id planned to take a whole year off to get to know her.

This was an amazing opportunity that had come at the worst possible time. I had every reason to say no, but I said yes.

I was excited to enter this brave new world in which I found myself. Huge numbers of people, growing by the day, were choosing to eat a more plant-based diet, whether for political, environmental, ethical or economic reasons. Although a relatively small number were actually becoming vegan, a larger number were looking to reduce the amount of meat and dairy in their diet. This felt like a big and important discussion I wanted a chance to be a part of it and help move the conversation forward.

At that time, many of the recipes being touted for vegans werent tempting. They didnt make me hungry. Plant-based food was either still in the shadows of its association with hemp-trouser-wearing hippies or hijacked by healthy eating. It felt as though the pleasures of eating and the importance of flavour had been forgotten.

As an outsider, I thought I was in a good place to create new and exciting vegan recipes. I understood meat-eaters and knew the textures, flavours and the richness they might miss. But I had also spent two years writing a vegetarian book, Fresh India, and knew how to make bitter cavolo nero leaves sing and how to tempt a beetroot hater into eating a plateful.

I signed the contract with the Guardian and so began my journey. It started with some difficult first weeks, but winter turned to spring and suddenly two years had passed. I learned many things along the way.

I was stuck for new recipes to begin with, but I suspected that by looking beyond India to East Asia and South East Asia I would find further inspiration for how to shift vegetables from the side to the centre of the table. I had already travelled to Sri Lanka and eaten sublime beetroot and cashew curries. In Thailand, I had memorized every twist in the plot of som tam salad and counted down the minutes between meals until my next pad thai. I had been soothed inside out by my first congee in Hong Kong, and then had my taste buds electrified in Chinatown in London with a bowl of dan dan noodles. I was hungry for more.

I also found vegan constraints are a catalyst for creativity. Not cooking with meat, fish, dairy or eggs forced me to think in new and interesting ways. I discovered the wonderful world of the Asian larder: fermented, pickled and salted ingredients things like kimchi, sweet miso and gochujang, all of which add flavour to a meal in an instant.

Veganism wasnt my only constraint. I had much less time on my hands too now that I was a new mum. This meant that elaborate dishes, or those that required too much time to prepare or cook, were left by the wayside. They didnt make the cut into my column, or into this book.

The biggest limitation of all was not being able to travel to the countries whose food I wanted to explore further. When writing my Indian cookbooks, I had travelled for months at a time, taking dog-leg turns when someone recommended a new dish, or a cook I had to meet. But Arya was still so young and dependent on me, and I didnt want to leave her. This time, I travelled by reading: I followed Fuchsia Dunlop around the streets of Chengdu and saw 1990s Jakarta through Madhur Jaffreys eyes.

When I ran out of books, I packed baby Arya and a notebook into a little baby carrier and off we went on a food safari to find the best laksa, bun cha or massaman curry in London.

I found that I could travel to Asia without travelling very far at all. I spoke to my accountant, Ben, who is from Borneo, where Sarawak laksa is prized. I begged Wichet, the owner-chef of the Thai restaurant Supawan, to show me how to make a tom kha ghai soup, and Shuko Oda, the Japanese chef, to teach me how to make her walnut miso. I accosted home cooks on social media who had innocently posted photos of their breakfast to ask them more about what they ate and how they made it.

Two years later, the time felt right to bring all these recipes together in a book. Some are vegetarian, not vegan, because this is, in the main, how I like to eat and therefore not all of them have featured in my column.

This isnt an attempt to be an authoritative voice on Asian food: to undertake such a survey would take years. This is food Ive created in my kitchen based on a very personal journey and an adventure. And this is now how I like to cook for my family and friends, and for myself. It is the food Ive come to love and I hope you love it too.

As I finish writing this book, Arya is a toddler and starting to piece her first words together. Ive felt so much guilt along the way and I am sure this tension between work, life and motherhood will always be present. But if theres one lesson that I wanted to teach my daughter from the moment I met her, it is this: she should dream. Sometimes what she dares to dream wont be easy to achieve, but itll be worth it in the end.