Going vegan need not be boring
Vegans are quite well looked after in the UAE dining scene, but should you struggle to find exciting options, here’s my take on one popular staple that everybody will enjoy
Catching up with a close friend over dinner last week was fun. It had been ages since we last had met, so we had lots to talk about. We decided on pizza; it’s the default cuisine when we can’t decide on what to eat. After ordering our starters and mains we continued our conversation. Our food arrived swiftly, and as the waiter placed the dishes on a tiny table, my friend reached for her bag and pulled out her phone.
Unaware I was watching her, she snapped our food, rearranging the table, moving the table centrepiece into the shot. It was like was she styling a fullon food shoot. She ordered me to move out of the shot, “I only want the food in the shot, not people”, so I obliged.
I now sat back from the table holding all the ugly things that could potentially spoil ‘the shot’: the bottle of water, a menu and her handbag.
Happy with her food shots we continued to enjoy our food. Jokes aside, Instagram is my favourite way to share food and recipes; I love the sense of community. I follow loads of people, from celebrity chefs and bloggers to my favourite restaurants. I am also guilty of being a frequent poster, obsessing about the number of likes I get on a recipe shot that has taken hours to perfect. What has occurred to me is that people like simple things.
A dish that’s quite complicated to create never gets as many likes as say, a chocolate cake. Recently, a humble jacket potato was getting a lot of instant-love.
I get a lot of messages where people ask me what knives I use, or what camera I shoot my pictures on, to which I will always reply. I recently received a message that was straightforward and to the point: “Hey chef, love your feed, but where are the veegs recipes?”
By veegs I assumed she was referring to vegan recipes. Always happy to experiment, I got researching what can they eat and what shouldn’t they eat. By ‘they’ I mean people who choose a plant-based diet excluding dairy, eggs or any other products of animal origin. With my new found vegan knowledge courtesy of the internet, I’m now well versed in the ingredients I can use and not use. Scouring the supermarket aisles, it became apparent vegans are very well looked after. There is vegan cheese, peanut butter, even mayonnaise! So after a few attempts and recipe tweaks, I bring you my vegan burgers, on vegan bread with a dollop of vegan ketchup. One last thing, make sure you get the best shot before posting it!