Rachel Ama
Property Mail chats to the
plant-based cook and YouTuber about music, food and family.
WRITTEN BY ELLA WALKER V
egan fare is oſten discredited for lacking heſt and flavour. No meat? No cheese? Well,
African peanut stew 30 / PROPERTYMAIL
it’s going to taste like cardboard then, isn’t it? It’s an assumption that gets gleefully bandied about by staunch, defensive carnivores, but it’s not one you can level at plant-based YouTuber Rachel Ama. Te London-based home cook- turned-purveyor-of-vegan-recipes calls her debut cookbook her “mix and blend”. Its actual title is Rachel Ama’s Vegan Eats - and it’s a compendium of the food she grew up eating, just veganised, without stripping out taste or nutrition. “My heritage is African, Caribbean and Welsh,” she explains, noting that, growing up in London, and being in and out of friends’ houses, she’s “always been around such a diverse range of food and spices and cultures. I really wanted to explore that in a vegan way.” Tink crispy jerk BBQ tacos with
plantain and mango salsa, Caribbean jackfruit fritters, coconut turmeric flatbreads, miso-glazed aubergines, curry roasted cauliflower and African peanut stew - the latter of which is a veganised version of one of her mum’s favourite dishes from Sierra Leone. African and Caribbean food, says Ama, “lends itself really well” to being plant-based. Firstly because of the seasonings built into the myriad styles that feature in these cuisines, and also because “in a lot of places in Africa and the Caribbean, plant-based eating isn’t [considered] so crazy”. Ama also focuses on whole foods, spices and herbs (“and deliciousness!”), so don’t expect recipes using substitutes like seitan - “which is great, I just wanted to stick to vegetables that you can get in the supermarket,” she notes. Te strangest ingredient you’ll find in the book shouldn’t be too daunting
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