Healthy Vegan Street Food

By Jackie Kearney

Jackie Kearney, MasterChef UK finalist in 2011, explores the nutritional benefits of Asian street food with 85 healthy vegan recipes.
Jackie Kearney has brought new life to healthy, plant-based cooking in this exciting follow-up to her award-winning Vegan Street Food. The book is inspired by the growing wellness culture in Asia as well as the glorious range of street food – from street hawkers, roadside cafés, food halls and more – which brings people from all walks of life together. Jackie takes us on a delicious journey from India to Indonesia, via Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Malaysia, enjoying classic dishes and crowd-pleasers we might already be familiar with, such as 'Massaman Curry in a Hurry', 'Faster Laksa' and 'Paradise Bounty Bars', all made a little healthier. The book also features many less well known regional specialities, such as 'Banh Trang Nuong' (Vietnamese rice paper pizza), 'Pepes Tahu' (Javanese tofu in banana leaves) and 'Khao Sen' (Thai tomato-braised rice noodles with porcini mushrooms). Combined with stories and anecdotes from the road, family photos and fascinating local information that transport the reader to the places and foods they fell in love with, this exciting book celebrates the best of vegan street food, whilst harnessing the most nutritious produce and ingredients.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryland Peters & Small
• Release date: Oct 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781788794923

Book preview

INDIA & SRI LANKA

Northern India

India is at the top of my list of places to return to as the world reopens for travel. Six months of overland travel has barely scratched the surface for me and I’m keen to spend some time in an ashram at some point in my life. Our journey as a young family took us from the northern most borders with Pakistan, zigzagging across the country for six months until we reached Sri Lanka. Whilst we spent several months in Sri Lanka (and Nepal) a few years later, we have yet to return to India. Fortunately my home town of Manchester is one of India’s many heart homes for food, especially Punjabi cuisine.

After the initial shock of landing in Delhi during the worst storms in 50 years, the children were distracted from the flooded streets by the vibrancy. Beautiful colours covered temples, decorative gateways and people’s clothing. Even religious pop-ups like the tent outside our guesthouse was adorned with garish and garlanded statues of gods, a gravity-defying chandelier and a giant mechanical peacock.

We started our overland trip from the northernmost region of Ladakh, nestled high in the Himalaya and sandwiched between northern Pakistan and a sliver of Afghanistan on one side, and Tibet and the remote north-west Chinese province of Xinjiang on the other. We spent a few weeks acclimatizing to our new life on the road. The children tackled treks that many adults would find challenging, growing out of two pairs of hiking boots during the trip and eating with locals without batting an eyelid. To be fair, it was me and Lee whose bodies took more time to adjust – to the altitude, the food and the battering that overland travel can give you.

Each leg of our Indian journey wowed us in some way or another. We got lost in ancient times, trekking in the ethereal and stark landscapes of Ladakh, learning about Buddhist culture and practices and talking to Tibetan refugees about their lives and hopes for the future. We then spent several weeks criss-crossing the often precarious and ever-shifting roads of Himachel Pradesh, with softer mountain-scapes of dense green forest, like pinched green scatter cushions on a backdrop of snowy rugged peaks. All the while reintroducing ourselves to more populous places again, and learning about the history of partition as we travelled. We all read vociferously. The children, aged seven at the time, returned to the UK with reading ages of 16 year olds.

The daily sunset closing ceremony at the Attari (Pakistan) and Wagah (India) border has become a major attraction over the years, and, consequently, large banks of concrete seating have been erected. We were crammed into the Indian side with thousands of spectators, mostly all pumped for a big party! We sat next to a group of day-trippers from Delhi. The young men had to catch the last train back to the capital, so I suspect it was rowdier carriage than usual that night. The Pakistan contingent numbered about eleven as far as we could see, so we can only assume they have better things to do than watch the Pakistan Rangers annihilate the Indian Border Security Force with their high-leg and wobble-shake-thrust moves. It’s certainly a spectacle for the newcomer, and there is plenty of snacking to be had in this almost-festival atmosphere.

Northern India introduced us to many extremes, from extreme altitude to depths of poverty that taught us all many lessons in gratitude. I had great intentions to visit several yoga retreats, from Manali to McCleod Ganj, but sadly illness got in the way. It wasn’t until Goa that I got to take part in some incredible yoga practice that sowed some seeds about what I’d like my future to look like.

Clockwise from top left: Buddhist prayer flags on the mountain pass, Leh, Ladakh; Flower garland adorning Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati; Diwali celebrations along the banks of the River Ganges, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh; Chapati wallah at a Manali street market, Himachel Pradesh.

From the Punjab and western borders of Pakistan, we took trains further east via more favourable stops in Delhi, up to the north-east regions from Lucknow and holy Varanasi to the ancient city of Patna, where the region of Bahar pushes temptingly close to the foothills of Sikkim (another ancient Buddhist region we had hoped to visit, but winter had finally come). We joined in the celebrations of Dusshera in the north and Diwali in Varanasi. Only very occasional encounters on our journey had us concerned. We were more often embraced with much loving kindness and generosity in every village, town and city – from the second-most-northern city of Leh in Ladakh to the southernmost tip of Kerala, and crossing the width of the country on the longest train journey of our lives. And on rare occasions, if all else failed us, there was always impeccable food to be had. It would be impossible to name our most memorable meal in India. There were simply too many.

HIMALAYAN ENERGY BARS

I’m terrible at breakfast in a traditional sense. I’ve never been one to eat until I’m actually hungry, so I end up naturally intermittently fasting. When I was young, so many adults would scold me for this, even when I tried to explain that milk made me feel unwell. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, they would say. Well, it turns out they were wrong. I am actually lactose-intolerant, and intermittent fasting is good for insulin resistance. Having stable blood sugar is important for a healthy system. However, when we extend our intermittent fast beyond breakfast, it’s easy to fall into the trap of sudden hunger and grabbing something that’s less nutritionally dense. I learned on many retreats, and from my Indian fasting friends, that nutrient density is essential when ‘breaking fast’, whether fasting intermittently or for several