30 June 2025
Naturally Vegan - Q&A with Julius Fiedler
We're delighted to be offering a competition in our newsletter this month for one lucky winner to win a copy of Julius Fiedler's new cookbook Naturally Vegan, plus a selection of sustainable Steenbergs spices. We love watching Julius' recipe videos and wanted to catch up with him to see where he gets his inspiration from and if he 'll share some top tips on how to follow a plant based diet...and he will! Read on to discover more...
1. We’re really interested to see all the plant based recipes from around the world. Which country has surprised you most with its plant based culinary repertoire?
When we think of Turkish food, we think of grilled meats, filo-pastry stuffed with cheese or buttery desserts. But that’s far from what Turkish food is actually like. When I visited İstanbul, I met with a chef who is known for Kuru Fasulye, a slow-cooked bean stew that is served with rice and lacto-fermented vegetables — and that also happens to be Türkiye’s National Dish. Then, across the country, but especially along the Aegean coast, you’ll find Zeytinyağlılar, which is an entire category of veg-based dishes that are cooked with olive oil instead of animal fat. This is the kind of food not many know about outside of Turkish borders, but locals eat and share it with great pride.
2. Which is your favourite recipe from your book? Does it have a special story attached to it?
Vada Pav. It’s an iconic street food from Mumbai that perfectly shows the complexity of Indian food. It’s only been around since the 1960s, when it started as an affordable snack for the textile workers, but it has the layers that make Indian food so exciting. First, there’s the soft bread bun that is traditionally vegan because dairy and eggs were too expensive, so they use oil instead. Then there’s a spiced potato fritter. But the highlight are the three chutneys. A refreshing coriander chutney, a garlic chutney and a tangy tamarind chutney. Top it off with chura, which are crispy bits of chickpea batter and you have a sensation of flavours and textures all in one bite — the perfect example to show how exciting vegan food can be.
3. Spices are often used with proliferation in plant based foods to add flavour and interest. What is your most frequently used spice to add extra flavour? Are there any lesser known spices that you use frequently that our readers may not be so familiar with?
The one spice I certainly use the most is cumin. It appears in the kitchens of so many countries, from India to regions all across the Middle East. It’s even often used in Spanish dishes like Espinacas con Garbanzos, where it’s known by locals as the secret touch to an authentic version. But I also love using spice blends. Chana Masala powder, Lebanese 7 spice, Ras el Hanout… those are gateways to great flavour. Once we’ve made them from scratch and appreciate the spices at play, it’s much easier to free ourselves from recipes and start using them as building blocks instead. Suddenly, some leftover vegetables in the fridge paired with a few aromatics, some legumes and a sprinkling of one of these spice mixes can create an incredibly flavoursome meal.
In terms of lesser known spices, I’ve grown fond of Khmeli Suneli whilst writing the book. It’s a Georgian spice blend with rarer ingredients like blue fenugreek, summer savory and ground marigold petals. It’s quite bitter in flavour, but when paired with pomegranate seeds and golden-fried aubergines for Nigvziani Badrijani, it’s wonderfully balanced.
4. Do you have any top tips for making it easy for people to follow a plant based diet?
Batch-cooking. It saves so much time and makes it all very approachable. I love sauce-based dishes, ideally also containing legumes, that are paired with a form of carb. I then cook a big batch of the dish and either freeze the leftovers or eat them over the next days, whilst cooking carbs like rice or pasta fresh. Most meals taste better the next day anyway and if you pair them with freshly cooked carbs, it’s as if it was prepared just moments ago.
For a slightly more advanced tip, I’d highly recommend a pressure cooker. Whilst stepping into kitchens around the world, this one gadget made an appearance time and again. To me, it always had the reputation of a dusty, old artefact of a few generations past. But rather than the pressure cooker being forgotten about entirely, the culture I grew up in had shifted culinary priorities and no longer cooked legumes and many other foods from scratch in the way previous generations had. It’s silly, because time and money are the two resources people often lack — and the pressure cooker can save both. With a little trick, which I explain in the book, it takes 7 minutes to cook chickpeas from scratch — that’s compared to 90 minutes in a normal pan. Dried legumes are also much cheaper compared to jarred or canned, and they involve fewer processing steps, meaning they have an even smaller environmental footprint. Win win.
5. Who would you most like to share a meal with and why?
The late Ennio Morricone, a phenomenal composer. Though I was always obsessed with food, before I started reaching for the knives and pans, I actually studied film. If films are paintings of light, it’s the sound and music that makes them come to life. Ennio Morricone had that power. Films like Cinema Paradiso and Once Upon a Time in the West kept me glued to the screen for their stories, but it was the music that lived on in my head. I would love to share a meal with him to understand the mind behind such a powerful force and feel inspired to apply his sentiment to the world of food.
For more recipes and information do follow Julius on his Hermann Instagram or visit his website https://bakinghermann.com/about/
Naturally Vegan: Delicious Recipes From Around The World That Just Happen To Be Plant-Based by Julius Fiedler, £25. DK RED.
Head shot image by Tara Fisher; Lifestyle image with peppers by Yuki Sugiura
