Veganistan: A Vegan Tour of the Middle East

Veganistan is a brand new volume from Sally Butcher following the silk trail started by Veggiestan and Persepolis.

The Middle East is a region lush in its vegetation, a gift to the non-meat-eater. Much of the cuisine is naturally vegetable based, with a lot of the flavour of recipes coming from the herbs, spices, cooking methods and sheer ‘joie de cuisiner’ traditional to Middle Eastern dining. Vegan diets can often be dismissed as lacking in certain nutrients, but there is no doubt that one thing a Middle Eastern kitchen teaches us is balance: every dish from a traditional kitchen is carefully crafted to offer a balance of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ elements to satiate the four humours of medieval yore with pulses, grains, nuts and vegetables galore.

The original mission of Veggiestan was to celebrate vegetables in all their glory, rather than recreating meat dishes, and in Veganistan Sally Butcher starts to play more with seitan, tofu and tempeh using them as vehicles to showcase the wonderful range of flavour this cuisine offers. This is not a book written from a moral point of view, but primarily from a food angle, a way of bigging up and celebrating the wonders of Central Asian, Iranian, Turkish, Arabic and East African vegetable cookery and creating a volume of accessible dishes.

Contents: Simple Meze Salads and Cold Starters Soups, Snacks and Hot Starters Bread, Rice and Grains From the Stewing Pot From the Oven From the Frying Pan and Into the Fire Salted, Smoked, Fermented and Pickled Foods, Sweet Treats, Drinks A Cheater’s Guide to Vegan ‘Meat’: ‘Dairy’ and ‘Egg’ Substitutes