It's time to celebrate now a huge win for local creativity and conscious cooking. Food stylist, home cook author and all around creative Isabella Niehaus has once again wowed the global stage by taking home Best Cookbook in a World in the World at the twenty twenty four Gormand World
Book Awards for the second year in a row. This time it's for Earthling Food, co authored would with artist Louis Jansen van Furen and featuring ten other culinary creatives from around the country, and it's a really rich tapestry of plant based recipes, visual art stories and also deeply personal moments around food. It's published by Naledi and it
invites readers into a world of flavor and connection. I'm delighted that we're joined by Isabella, who's actually in Turkey, so we're speaking to via Zoom about this incredible project, the power of collaboration, and of course the award. Isabella, good afternoon, Good to have you with.
Us, Hi, Sarah Pain. Thanks. Yes, from a very very hot Turkey.
Send some this way, Send some this way, please, we're reeling from a very cold and wet weekend. Listen Isabella, an enormous congratulations to you. Two years two international wins. How are you feeling about the win?
Well, I must admit in twenty twenty three when we won the first award for a vegan book, the best vegan book in the world, you obviously don't think by doing a second book that you'll get the award again. So I mean it was that the most amazing feeling. You're sitting among representativeships from eighty three different countries and all of a sudden your book is up there and it's number one in the world, and you don't know whether you should laugh, whether you should cry. I think
you even forget your own name. You forget that you've got to say thank you in English and not donkey, donkey, donkey in Afracans. So it really it's fabulous, and I think it only hits you the next day when you realize.
Wow, yeah, yeah, I imagine it's probably still sinking in. Honestly, what was the vision behind Earthling Food is wella how did this idea idea come together? And also maybe you could speak a little bit to Louie's contribution as well.
Yes, well, Louis is a vegan, he's been a vegan for twelve years, and we've been friends for absolute ages, so even the first book was inspired by him. At that stage, I'd already published my own book, which was also a best in the world. God has sound as if I'm so cute, so we it was. It was a novelty for me to have to actually cook vegan, and I was so inspired by how easy it is and how healthy and how beneficial it is for a
lot of people. So after the first book, obviously after winning the World Award, we decided we have to do a second book. And it was actually the president of the Gourmand Awards when I told him that we were going to do a second book. He said, it's very difficult to do something in the same genre that is completely different, and that is why we decided to get some of our most favorite food people, chefs and writers to be part of the book, just to make it
completely different. So we asked eight of our favorite people the ten chefs includes me and Louis, to each give us, even though they're not vegan, to give us three vegan recipes, and then we filled their chapters with seven additional recipes, so it had a completely new take to the previous book.
We also used three different photographers with different styles, and I think the most favorite part of the book for me and Louis was I called it putting together the Bible, where you have everything printed out and you almost do a layout which picture should go where, and do a beautiful mixture of the work of the three photographers. Yes, so how did.
You decide who you were going to feature outside of you and Louis? Of course, how do you? I mean that must have in and of itself been quite a painstaking process.
It was, but in the beginning we basically had categories and we thought someone like Quibbers from a Maratha from Wolfrat, because he does a lot of foraging, he would be perfect. Then Sola Nane and Ruben Ruffelow Labs of Mine. I absolutely adore those two people. Vicky de Bierre, who is a very very well known South African. She used to work on a magazine as a food editor, which he's written a whole lot of books on low cobs. So Vicky was a nice, a lovely person to bring in.
Arena from Lumpa course, it's someone that we both absolutely adore and her food is wholesome. So everyone that we brought in that we pulled in had had a speciality. Lazelle from from Serendeputy in wilderness grows her own mushrooms and things. So yes, everyone we brought in had had speciality, and we are fond of all of them. So it was our food, like our food. Heros do you think?
I wonder, Isabelle? I mean, it is a vegan cookbook in that it features vegan recipes, but it's not just for vegans. How do you hope that it speaks to all of us, even the carnivores amongst amongst us, you know, everybody, no matter what people's food philosophies are, all their particular diets or food choices.
Well, I'm not a vegan. I mean I love I specialize in cooking fish so and love red meat, a little bits of chicken. So I'm not a vegan. But the book is there. Actually it is actually perfect for everyone because all you would do is you can substitute where where for instance, that they talk about or we talk about a plant based butter, you can use normal butter. A plant based egg replacement, you use normal eggs. So
the entire book basically can be used by anyone. There are the most most fabulous recipes in the book and easy. Nothing is there are no odd ingredients, nothing about it is weird. So I think most people, without realizing, eat vegan quite a few times in a week. I mean, if you put a tray of vegetables with olive oil into the oven, that's vegan. People just when they hear the word vegan, they want to run to the mountains.
Louis always says it, Just give me a butternut that's been cut in half, put some olive oil in it and stood in the oven, and that's meal. And a lot of us eat like that.
Anyway, it's true what you're saying. I mean that there is an on both counts, and that often when people start talking about vegan recipes, if you don't, if you are not necessarily somebody who experiments in the kitchen or has a wide cooking repertoire. I'm concluding myself in that the thought that, the thought that, the thought that the number of my ingredients may may be restricted by turning vegan a vegan dish sends me into hives. But I
realized that actually that's not true at all. Michelle has actually sent a message in on the WhatsApp line saying, has anyone noticed how vegetarian and vegan food disappears first at functions? Everyone loves it, says Michelle, And you're right, and she's asking me to please say the name of
the book again. It's called Earthling Food. And if you are just joining us, I'm delighted to be joined by the author, Isabella n ee House, who has just one the best cookbook in the world at the twenty twenty four Gorman World Cookbook Awards. And that's true. Add vegetarian food is always very quick off the plate at various functions, isn't it, Isabella.
Yes, because it's also light. You know. That's the one thing when you know when people say to me, but you're not a vegan, and I'll say, but I probably eat vegan four times a week because I love just putting a tray of veggies in the oven, cooking some or just getting some bulgar wheat and mixing it with the veggies, and you have this absolutely amazing meal. You know, you can add, you can add, you can make a
sauce with yogurt or whatever. I mean. Those I think the biggest thing for me if I had to go vegan that I really really would miss is cheese and cream and butter.
Exactly the butter, the butter, I wonder. So the African cuisine isn't always associated with plant based food. We're known as the Briers, the nation of meat lovers. Did you see that the book as an opportunity or both books that you've done that vegan books as an opportunity maybe to sort of shift perceptions and also to celebrate just what is possible and not only possible here, but possible with amazing local produce as well.
The big thing is that people think when they do a brie, and it's right, they can have their meat. But how many of us when you do a brie you put potato intantfoil, or an onion int and foil, or a buttonnut or cabbage. There is nothing better than a cabbage put on an interant foil and on the fire.
So those things have already been been done for so long, but people don't think of that when they When you say there's a vegan coming and you're doing a bri, you think, oh, dear lord, what are we going to do? But you're already putting those veggies. I do when I do a brier. I love putting the vegetables on the coals, so it is nice to think that you can actually do. You can do a barbecue with meala's and potatoes and onions and red peppers, and you can do the most
magnificent barbecue like that. So yes, it is a more healthy way. And I think with especially with Louis Way, and I'm speaking on his behalf because he's in France, he doesn't. It's not a question of saying to people you must stop eating fish or any animal product. It's just to be conscious of where your products come from. And it's the same with our vegetables and things. Be conscious of where our products are coming from. Try and
get the best possible produce. That was basically the main focus behind doing two vegan books is to make people aware of what we're putting in our bodies.
It's rather serendipitous that we're talking to you and what has become known as meat free mondays, I go other around the world, so folks maybe rush out, go and buy go and buy earthly food. Still up something today for meat free Mondays and then let us know tomorrow what you cooked. And maybe you've already got Maybe you've already got the cookbook. What's your favorite recipe from the book? Maybe you could let us know if you are just joining us. I'm absolutely delighted that we are joined by
Isabella nie House. We're talking about her latest win at the twenty twenty four Gommand World Cookbook Awards, taking home Best Cookbook in the World for Earthling Food, which she co autered with Louis Jansen Fanfuren and ten other culinary creative South Africans. Really a rich tapestry of plant based recipes, visual art, stories, and deeply personal moments around food and
food is deeply personal, isn't it, Isabella? There is there are stories around food that we passed through our families, through generations.
Do you know, Sarah? I think that food is love and food is joy, and I always are used to do whenever I cook, I always for a lot of people. I always say that I love creating moments of magic and joy for people, and food does exactly that. I mean, there is nothing better in life than preparing a wonderful meal for me and actually seeing how people really enjoy it. So so much love and passion goes into cooking that yes, I think food and food is like a common denominator.
It's something that pulls people together. That strangers can become friends over a plate of food.
For sure. What's next? It's always awful, is it when when you celebrate something and you're experiencing your own magic and joy and just and having that moment, and then somebody like me comes along and says, right back to work, what's coming up next?
I've actually I've just completed a manuscript for a next book. When I go back now, I'm just going to put the final touches to it. It will be published next year, and it's called Bella's Kitchen and it is just well, it's a cookbook with loads of memories of growing up in the pre state of living in Langabah and I used to open my house for long table lunches. Now I live in Rebecca Steel. And it's also celebrating the years that I because I really started cooking very late
in my life. I found the fashion very late in my life, in my mid fifties, so I'll be turning seventy now almost. So it's also my years as a fashion editor of traveling the world and then being subjected to the most amazing, amazing meals all over the world, and how those memories stuck, and how I give interpretations of those wonderful meals that I enjoyed, how I kind of do those meals now?
Well, we cannot wait, so I'm sure it's likely to be another award winner for now though, from all of us here at Cape Isbella, congratulations on your win folks. The book is called Earthling Food. Why not go and pick up a copy and make something for meat free Mondays. It's four minutes to two o'clock