Deliciously vegan…

When you think about Greek and Greek Cypriot food, your mind might go to a whole lot of meat. “There’s just so many kebabs, and we love a grill,” admits Georgina Hayden.

“That is probably a preconception that is justified.”

But there’s another side to the cuisine she’s keen to uncover – the plant-based food eaten during Lent and other fasting times of the year. And there’s an awful lot of fasting: up to 200 days a year, including the 50 days before Easter, 50 days before Christmas, and every Wednesday and Friday.

“If you’re doing it properly, that is a lot of days without meat,” says Georgina.

“But it means when you do eat meat, they go hard – it’s about balance.”

Georgina, who worked with Jamie Oliver for 12 years, has dedicated her latest cookbook to ‘nistisima’ – “a Greek word, meaning Lenten food,” she explains.

“It’s the food we eat in the preparation for any big religious festival. That is the bigger meaning, but if you were presented with something that was ‘nistisimo’, or some food that was ‘nistisima’, basically that means it’s plant-based, on a more simple level.”

It does include shellfish, but Georgina’s book is entirely vegan, “for the sake of ease”.

It might all sound a bit daunting – the religious references and vegan eating – but that’s not Georgina’s aim at all. She’s keen to not tell anyone what to do – she’s not vegan herself and wouldn’t ask anyone to go completely plant-based if they don’t want to .

And you won’t find sad meat replacements or vegan cheese anywhere in the book – particularly as Georgina tried vegan feta once and calls it “honestly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten”. Instead, she found so many dishes from Cyprus and surrounding countries are accidentally vegan, and totally delicious.

“Instead of trying to replicate cauliflower cheese and make it something it’s not, it’s about finding new dishes that have been around for centuries that just happen to be plantbased,” she says – and this wasn’t a hard task at all (the book could have been “double the size, easily”).

Georgina grew up around Greek Cypriot food – her grandparents ran a taverna in North London – but her research took her even further afield.