By Leigh O’Connor.
It is no secret that Shannon Martinez is not vegan – but she does eat a plant-based diet 95% of the time.
A tour de force in vegan and vegetarian cooking, Shannon has been a Chef in Melbourne for more than 25 years and is best known as owner of Australia’s most prolific plant-based businesses, Smith & Daughters and the wildly popular Smith & Deli.
She now brings her rockstar status to the fore with her latest cookbook ’Vegan Italian Food: Over 100 Recipes for a Plant-based Feast’:
‘It might seem strange I am writing an Italian cookbook when my last name is Martinez, but I promise you I am not doing this to capitalise on trends or to appropriate someone else’s culture,” she says.
"When I grew up in Melbourne in the eighties, Welcomed Overseas Guests – or WOGs, as we affectionately call ourselves – were all seen as the same. Spanish, Italian, Greek, Maltese, Egyptian – we were all wogs. We all lived in the same areas, bought our groceries from the same specialty stores, hung out and cooked together. It was a safety-in-numbers thing and a hanging-out-where-good-food-could-be-found thing.”
Shannon loves Italian food and the seasonal philosophy of its cooking:
"I love taking an absolute glut of produce at its peak and eating it raw, cooking it down to a pulp, preserving and jamming it. I love the inherently frugal nature of the cuisine, where dishes are formed out of necessity and by intuition as much as tradition. It is what makes Italian food so impossibly tasty and accessible as well as affordable to cook.”
Shannon says her aim for this book is to focus on the breadth of dishes that already exist in Italian cuisine that don’t require veganising.
"However, I know fans of my venues would revolt if I didn’t include my recipes for salami, cacio e pepe and tiramisu. Never fear, they are in here. Before I hear an Italian say I’ve made their ancestors roll over in their graves, the nature of veganising these dishes will always inevitably be inauthentic.
"What I can guarantee is, if you feed them to your Nonna, she won’t be able to tell the difference.”
This cookbook is like a decadent, grungy house party full of plates piled high and models eating granita by the pool. Most of all it is a joyous celebration of Italian peasant cooking – what Shannon calls ‘vegan food in its purest form’. These are recipes that Shannon loves to eat:
"Dried beans, pulses and legumes cooked to a pulp, infused with aromatics and wiped up with soft, crusty bread as well as bitter leaves braised to within an inch of their lives in healthy glugs of olive oil.”
Here are three recipes to try out at home and release your inner ‘Italian vegan’:
"As a vegan, you probably haven’t eaten a fritto misto in a while as it’s usually made from a selection of fried seafood. Here, I give mushrooms an oceanic flavour by blanching them in kombu. Also, fried shit, f**k yeah!”
This is a really visually appealing and tasty salad. It’s a fantastic addition to a large spread.
The olive salad is a nod to the muffuletta – another one of those classic Italian-American dishes. When served over a slowly roasted, whole eggplant (aubergine), you have the most indulgent main for minimal effort. Make this a centrepiece for your next dinner party.
When she isn’t running her businesses or writing successful cookbooks, Shannon sometimes cooks for celebrity vegans such as Kourtney Kardashian, Travis Barker, Billie Eilish, Cyndi Lauper and more.
‘Vegan Italian Food’ is like no other cookbook – a perfect fusion of decadence and affordability, of well-crafted recipes paired with stunning photography. You will want to step through the page and join the house party!
