Chestnut Tree House
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 Hayden. “But it means when you do eat meat,
Georgina Hayden.
they go hard – it’s about balance.”
Hayden, 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 Hayden’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 Hayden’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 – she just wants to “empower people with a load of recipes that introduce more lentils and vegetables to their life”.
And you won’t find sad meat replacements or vegan cheese
Nistisima by Georgina Hayden (Bloomsbury, £26). anywhere in the book – particularly as Hayden tried vegan feta once (“I was curious!”) and calls it “honestly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten”. Instead, she found so many dishes from Cyprus and the surrounding countries are accidentally vegan, and totally delicious in their own right.
“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 plant-based,” she says – and this wasn’t a hard task at all (the book could have been “double the size, easily”).
Hayden grew up around Greek Cypriot food – her grandparents ran a taverna in North London – but her research took her even further afield. “I was researching not just Greek food but the food from the surrounding countries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. There are so many dishes and so much food from these places that is naturally and traditionally vegan,” she explains. “That just fascinates me, especially nowadays, when we’re trying to eat more veg and trying to be a bit more conscientious for the planet, whether you’re a meateater or not.”
She wrote the book when the pandemic was in full force and she couldn’t travel to meet people.
The Secret To Delicious Vegan Cooking From The Mediterranean And Beyond is priced £26.