Award-Winning Brick Lane Chef to Launch Indian Vegan Cookbook

Top, award-winning chef, Niaz Caan is to launch Vegan: An Indian Cookbook this summer. The book contains 42 vegan dishes that are inspired by long held family recipes - such as his great grandmother's Begun Uribeeshi Gatta - as well as modern takes on traditional meat dishes, such as Tofu Tikka Masala and No Butter No Chicken Curry.

Niaz is the award-winning executive chef of Brick Lane's City Spice and has already appeared on Channel 4's Steph's Packed Lunch, Channel 5's Secret of the Fast Food Giants, BBC London and ITV news.

The book was inspired by the success of Niaz's Vegan Menu which he launched at City Spice in 2019 and includes new dishes that he developed with the home cook in mind.

With Vegan: An Indian Cookbook, Niaz wants to prove that home made Vegan food can be tasty and that Indian food can be nutritious and delicious.  He spent many months perfecting spice mixes, cooking techniques and finding plant-based alternatives to Ghee, a clarified butter widely used in Indian cooking, to add depth of flavour. The book is priced at £20.99.

He says: “I saw more and more of my friends turning vegan and I was increasingly being asked about vegan dishes in the restaurant so I decided to spend time developing and updating dishes to create something that I felt was every bit as tasty as the meat, seafood and dairy dishes on offer.”

Aged just 22, Niaz started working in restaurants from the age of 14 and cooking in the City Spice kitchen at aged 17. He went on to secure a first class degree in Economics from the University of Birmingham, but returned to the professional kitchen when he realised that cooking was his real, true passion. Since then, he has quickly risen in culinary success, winning plaudits for his modern take on traditional Indian dishes at City Spice, which regularly has queues around the block, even during these challenging times.