Aladdin star grants wishes for great vegan recipes
Actor's culturally diverse cookbook draws from restaurant road trip
Mena Massoud regularly cooked vegan meals for his friends in his Los Angeles home before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Egyptian-born and Toronto-raised star of the big-budget 2019 Disney live-action movie version of Aladdin said he often heard the same thing from them after they'd enjoyed their meal: If they could cook like him, and make the food he was putting on the table, they too would be vegan.
It was those home dinners and inquiries about his diet while on various TV and film sets — Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Reprisal and Run this Town to name a few — that helped inspire his new cookbook Evolving Vegan.
The book is a bright, engaging and unstuffy journey toward veganism through recipes collected on a North American restaurant road trip.
Massoud and his team visited about 50 plant-based restaurants and, in the end, shared 25 recipes in Evolving Vegan.
“For the book, I wanted to show people how accessible it was by travelling around North America going to all these different cities and showing people that there are great plant-based options no matter where you go,” said Massoud, who is busy these days developing projects within his own production company Press Play Productions.
Throughout the book, cities and local vegan “heroes” are highlighted, giving the reader a look into the scenes that Massoud discovers on his travels.
Canadian representation includes Vancouver's Heirloom, Chickpea, Indigo Age Café, Meet Restaurant and Virtuous Pie. The book also highlights menu items from Toronto's Sweet Hart Kitchen, Rosalinda, Planta Yorkville and Yamchops restaurants.
The recipes are wide ranging and draw on many cultures including Egyptian, Ethiopian, Taiwanese, Indian and Chinese fare.
“Recipe selection was like working on a jigsaw puzzle,” said Massoud. “We've got all sorts of recipes in there. I wanted to include recipes that were culturally diverse but I also included recipes that were a range of very easy to difficult.”
Joining the easy-to-make list are home favourites from Massoud and his mother. While Massoud can serve up a mean vegan omelette with roasted potatoes, fresh mango rolls or veggie-packed veggie burgers, he did not grow up vegan. Actually, quite the opposite, as he tells it.
“I'm Egyptian, so I have probably eaten more parts of an animal than 95 per cent of people in North America, at least,” said Massoud, who was born in Cairo and moved with his family to Toronto when he was three. “I grew up eating everything. Stomach lining, heart, brain, I've eaten it all.”
His journey to veganism began in 2015 when he and a couple of friends decided they wanted to make changes in their diet. He said they did research on the benefits of a plant-based diet, not just from a personal dietary point of view but also from the planet's point of view.
With that information in hand, Massoud began to make changes.
“I slowly started cutting things out from there. I started by cutting out red meat first, then eggs, then chicken and as I was doing that I felt better and better physically, mentally. I felt like I had more energy. I was more clear headed,” said Massoud. “I was making progress at the gym that I had never made before. So, I wanted to tell people about my experience doing it slowly.
“I think a lot of people have a misconception that if you go vegan you have to do it all at once and that you can't break at all from it, that it's a strict regime which it is not. At the end of the day it's your diet, you can do whatever you want.”
Massoud emphasizes the idea of easing into the plant-based world. Think of it like starting a new exercise program. You wouldn't just jump off the couch after 10 years of inactivity and run a marathon. That's not only a recipe for injury and disappointment, but it's also not a successful lifestyle change.
The same can be said for changing your diet. Begin with little successes. Learn to cook and learn to recognize the way you feel after lessening animal products in your diet. Take baby (spinach) steps.
“If you try to give up everything you have known your whole life overnight, naturally it's not going to work. You're going to be lost. You're not going to know what to do. You're going to start stressing out about not getting enough vitamins and minerals and nutrients, which is a real thing, a real concern,” said Massoud. “You are going to feel like a fish out of water, no pun intended, so it is important to give up things slowly.”
He suggests beginning by going vegan once or twice a week, doing so on consecutive days. That small consistency, he says, will allow you to listen to how your body is reacting to the switch. If cooking is overwhelming and not something you can do every day, Massoud says plant-based foods are easier and easier to find in restaurants. “There are 50 vegan burger places I can go to and if I took any meat eater there they wouldn't know the difference,” he said. “We are living in a fantastic time for all these meat alternatives and meat substitutes.”