Happy birthday to us!

The Vegetarians’ Kitchen celebrates its first birthday today.

Happy birthday to us!

The Vegetarians’ Kitchen turns one year old today and what a journey it has been!

I started the site six months into 2020 because I was inspired by how people from across the world were coming together to support each other during a pandemic. Even as governments shut down physical borders, people from various countries got together in the online space — whether it was celebrities such as Chris Martin and John Legend livestreaming free concerts from their home or chefs such as Massimo Bottura and Christina Tosi sharing their recipes on Instagram.

Do you remember the tennis challenge that Roger Federer started, in which he urged people to volley against a wall? And which Andy Murray countered with his 100 volley challenge?

People from all over the world — whether they were celebrities or not — designed activities to help make it easier for others to stay at home to break the chain and stop the spread of the virus.

It made me wonder: do we really need a pandemic to bring us together? Why are we so focused on our differences that we fail to see our similarities?

TVK’s aim was to show that we do have a lot in common, even when it is something as simple as food. Working on the site gave me a reason to reach out to my friends in various parts of the world, with whom I had lost touch as life got in the way. I hope the site will do the same for you — help you start a dialogue with people from across cultures and see that beneath the superficial differences of skin colour and language and religion, we share the same emotions of joy and sorrow, the same worries, and the same love for food.

To celebrate TVK’s birthday, I have gone back to the most basic food item that every culture has: bread. The variety is immense so I narrowed it down to fried bread from three varied regions – Panama, the Balkans, and India.

Hojaldres from Panama and luchi from India are perfect savoury breads that go with any accompaniment while mekici (my vegan version) from the Balkans is more of a sweet bread. Each of them is distinct from the other in texture and taste, and yet, they are very similar to each other when it comes to ingredients, method and shape.

I hope you enjoy these and the other recipes that are on the site. Happy eating!