 Welcome to Healthy Planet, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series. I'm your host, Dr. Grace O'Neill, joining me today is Elaine Cumick, vegan chef and author of Hawaii, a Vegan Paradise and Tasting Hawaii Vegan Style. Today we're going to talk about vegan food. So Lillian, tell us about some of your new projects. I have been quite the busy be grace. I'm actually doing a course now with the first vegan patisserie course with the Le Cordon Bleu London venue, which is very, very exciting. I actually read about it in one of my vegan magazines that I subscribe to, which by the way is a great idea if anyone is interested in going more plan based. Look out for some, you know, magazines that you might want to subscribe to because they, they do really pack a lot of information. So I found out about it through one of those magazines and I'm now in my eighth week of the 10 week course. And I'm learning all about traditional French pastries on some of the recipes are from the 18th century. They're just incredible. And it's like learning a whole new sort of world of cooking, something I'm not used to, something you definitely don't want to eat every day. Yeah, how the how the French stays slim and, and, you know, fit looking is beyond me because these pastries, although, you know, dangerous in what they contain are pretty spectacular. So that's, that's one thing I'm doing. And I'm also writing my third book. Okay, so tell us more about the course. I'm wondering what the course is it completely online. Is that how you're able to do all the cooking online is demonstrations. The course is is only available online, unfortunately, because I'm the type of person that would actually be willing to go there for this course. So I am pushing the chefs there and hinting that they should definitely open up one that isn't online. So this is an online course. They give you assignments every week, it's full on actually I kind of worry about some of the other students in the course that have full time jobs because I'm spending about five to seven hours every day five days a week. And to get these, to get these dishes pumped out. French pastries I've learned are very, very fiddly. Definitely not something that someone who doesn't like baking or cooking will enjoy. It's a lot of work. And I think it's more for people like myself who are kind of a bit advanced when it comes to cooking or perhaps the home cork is really, you know, into trying new things. So it is online, you get assignments, you get graded every week. How can they give you when they don't taste the stuff that that's the only thing they don't taste but you have to send in a lot of photos of the process as you're cooking each each dish. Wow. Yeah, and there's, they go through things like food handling sanitizing your kitchen cleaning your kitchen. It's, it's exactly what I would expect from record on blur, to be quite honest, they, they have absolutely smashed this course in that it is very, very professional, very thought out, and for an online course, well worth the money so if anyone out there who's interested in upping their game in the pastry world, definitely go and check it out. I believe record on blur London is the only one that does it has the course available in English. So the, what was their inspiration to do a vegan course. I don't know personally how, how it came about but my guess is that they're, they're, they're getting, getting, yeah, with the idea. Yeah, they're getting onto the idea that people want to, people want to learn more about plant based cooking, more people are going plant based. And this course also offers a lot of gluten free options as well as just ask you that that's funny that you brought it up. I actually, I'm, I, I don't have a problem consuming gluten but my second book tasting away vegan style is actually gluten free as well as plant based. So I did learn a lot about gluten gluten free cooking but this course is just it takes you into, you know, the, the, the really just the, the whole basics of gluten free cooking which is something that's hard to learn in a Syrian something like this, and manipulating different flowers and starches to make you know the perfect gluten free, you know, combination for whatever it is you're cooking so it is a very good learning experience and a nice segue into my writing as I as I move along with my next book so very exciting. I guess with the gluten free flowers, what kind of flowers do they use to kind of make things taste like they're not going to make I guess that's the right because yeah, some of the things don't really taste like, you know, you would like them to taste like I agree, absolutely. I've never been a fan personally of gluten free baking or gluten free baked foods. When it comes to anything else outside of that realm like vegetable dishes or stuff like that really, I can't tell the difference between the gluten free or the non gluten free. But when it comes to baking you are working with various different starches the starches can be anything from potato starch potato starch corn starch. We use a lot of nut flowers in French pastries. So I've learned learned that I very much dislike having to save almond flour or ground almonds, which is something that we use a lot as well in gluten free baking so basically nut flowers and obviously anything that doesn't contain wheat. And pretty much these days you can you can get a whole range of nut flowers online and stuff a little bit limited with what we can get here in Hawaii. You can also make a lot too. Yeah, Lillian so absolutely making nut flowers is as simple as using dried nuts and then grinding them either in a coffee grinder or a food processor if you have one that's strong enough and that that that will work as well. I'm actually making today a chocolate tart from the 18th century. Yes, and it uses chestnut flour. Now chestnut flour cannot be found anywhere on the island and it's it is quite expensive quite pricey so I did manage to just buy my own chestnuts and I've baked them and dried them out and it's quite a long it's a lengthy process to be honest so, you know, you know, delving into something like this is more for again the advanced cook but if you're into learning more about plant based cooking honestly just jump online to check out a few magazines that you might want to subscribe to because when things like that are getting delivered at your door to your door, you know, once every month or help whatever the subscription is on you're going to start learning a lot just by reading you know take your magazine down to the pool or the beach and and read and learn because plant based cooking is not difficult doesn't have to be difficult. Are there magazines that you would recommend to somebody who's starting out. There are so many I seriously I subscribed to so many. There's actually a UK based one that I really really love it's called vegan food and living. That's an excellent one that you can also get these subscriptions e subscriptions if you don't want the hard cover which can be quite quite expensive. That's a good one Bon Appetit is another one I like. There's there's stuff in Bon Appetit. Yes, I like Bon Appetit it's not a vegan one but they do, they do add a lot of vegan stuff. I, I like magazines that don't focus on smoothies too much because I'm kind of getting over, you know, smoothie after smoothie after smoothie. Yeah, they're very easy to make too so it's not like there's much involved, you know, so yes, so just yeah that's that would be my advice and pick up a few rescue books, Barnes and Noble here in Alamoana have an excellent rain. They have an excellent collection of vegan cookbooks. I go in there all the time and I collect cookbooks. I have, I have so many. I have so many and I'm not even sure for anything I just collect them and collect them I'm trying not to collect them but now I've been collecting them on my Kindle too. So, I got to stop but. I know one can get quite carried away I admit that there's nothing like having a collection of cookbooks and you know whenever you have guests and they're going through your bookshelf or your collection it's always fun to just pull out pull out cookbooks and if anything they're at the photos and drool. Yeah. And see how far plant based cooking has come. That's true. It's just show us some of the, I guess Michael if you could show us some of the pictures of the things that Lillian has made and if she could, if you just tell us, you know, there's some picture of some bread there I think on the right. Yep, the bread on the right is actually that's the gluten free bread I believe we're looking at some bread rolls I mean look at how beautiful and rustic looking they are. These are recipes from the Le Cordon Bleu cause, which again uses a lot of almond flour, not almond flour sorry ground ground almonds not almond flour. Yeah, my Instagram is, I was going to say if anyone is interested take a look at my Instagram page it's Lillian vegan under bar chef Hawaii. And you can see what I'm getting up to there's lots of lots of pictures of my dishes and some of the dishes that I have in my cookbooks the first one Hawaii a vegan paradise, which came out just over two years ago. Yeah, I can't believe two years. Yes, it's gone quite fast and then my second one came out just last December so time to to get the third one out as soon as as soon as I feel it's the right thing and the right timing. I want to, before we move on to your third book I want to ask you about something that I kind of have craving for, but I'm not necessarily good for you, but they're really good. And I don't know if they teach you how to make these and French cooking, but you know how they have those little eclairs and like cream puffs. I'm going to make those and then three class gluten free because I haven't had one in years. I'm just, I'm just waiting for the day I can have one again because now that I'm vegan and gluten free there's, you know, there's nowhere I can buy that so I, I have to tell you when I went through the recipes that we were going to be learning in the 10 week course. One of the things I was actually disappointed that I did not see. In the recipe section what was the chocolate eclair. I'm with you on that one I agree that I used to eat a lot of chocolate eclairs when I was growing up as well I grew up vegetarian. I never ate meat or fish but I did eat a lot of junk food. Anything that didn't have you know meat or fish in it I, I thought that was fabulous. The worst diet I've ever been on actually. Yeah, I think the vegetarian diet is one of the worst things you can do. If you're going to try and clean up your diet, I would just say go, go out, go all out and try and try and get plant based or at least 80% plant strong. So the chocolate eclair I, I'm afraid I can't give you any hints on what we've done a lot of cream and a lot of chocolate. Yeah, a lot of ganache and stuff. I love that kind of stuff. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I do too but you know Grace, food doesn't always have to be good for you. I believe that we do have to treat ourselves sometimes and to me as someone who is trying to reach more people and, and let more people know about how good that base cooking can be. I need to be aware, and I am aware of the fact that not everybody wants to eat a smoothie and a salad, because you're not going to bring them over to the green side. If you know if they think it sucks if the food doesn't taste good. That's one thing I do try to do. Definitely in my books is is showcase everyday food that that people normally eat that is the vegan version. In both books, the Hawaiian themed books that I did write, both of them are exactly that. There's, there's one smoothie in the first book, and nothing else and no smoothie recipes in the second book. They're all like, there's amazing burgers in the book. There's breads, pastries, cakes, chocolate cakes, desserts to die for. And it's everyday food and I think that's why my books have been selling well. Because people who are not plant based want to eat normal food and not feel like they're missing out on anything. The first thing that people say when they talk about how they could never go vegan is, but I could never give up cheese. I could never give up meat, but really nowadays we have so many substitutes. It's not that difficult to do. It's all up here in the mind. Once you can change the mindset and look at a vegan burger the way that you did a regular burger, I think that's where you're going to make the shift very quickly. So tell us about your new book then that you're working on right now. You have a title yet? No, and I wouldn't call it a new book because it's not anywhere near there. I don't want to give too much away because people are kind of wondering what's going to come next given that both books were Hawaii themed. The only reason I wrote the second book in that manner with the Hawaiian theme was because when I was writing my first book about Hawaiian food, I realized I had so many more recipes to go. Both of them have over 120 recipes in each book. And I could probably still write a third book on Hawaiian food if I wanted to, but my roots in cooking are not in the Hawaiian cuisine. I'm actually a trained Japanese chef, so in my next book I guess you could probably expect a lot of umami flavors. Oh nice, I love that kind of stuff. Something very different and it definitely will be food that will bring out the curious cook in you. So I love making food that people just want to take photos of or can't believe is vegan stuff like that. Fun stuff but food that makes a lot of sense at the same time. So when you said you said you were trained in Japan so did you go to a vegan cooking school in Japan or what kind of, I mean what did you do back then because sure maybe it was not as friendly to vegans I don't really know what Japan is like I do know they have a lot of vegan restaurants available now but I don't know what it was like when you became vegan. That's a great question that I do get asked a lot. So when I decided that I was going to go into the culinary world somehow I was very young. I lived in Japan for 30 years. I moved there when I was 18 years old. And in my early 20s I realized that I did want to just go into the vegan, the cooking world, but I did not want to have to go to Japan or any meat or fish. So this was a challenge and no cooking school in Japan or outside of Japan for that matter at the time would accept me as a student because I refuse to touch anything that was not flat based. So that was a challenge and then I knew that I wanted to open a restaurant I had already planned in my vision that at 30 years old I was going to, I was going to open my own restaurant and I did. April 1 of that year I turned 30. And so for the 10 years or eight years leading up to that I just did as much studying on my own as I could. I traveled lots and lots of dinner parties and every time I did people would say you should open a restaurant. That was actually what I was going to do the whole time. I did get some private lessons with chefs there, Japanese chefs who are friends of mine who do run or did run restaurants there. That's how I did it. That's how I learned. And in Japan outside of Japan as well if you work in a commercial kitchen as a head chef for three years or more. That is how you get the title chef. So, when I was thinking how am I going to become a chef without actually going to school because there was no way in the world I would be, you know, digging my life into a dead animal. Absolutely not. So I thought okay that works for me. I'll open my restaurant, hire people to work for me. I'll work in the kitchen. I was confident and three years into that I had my restaurant, my dining bar for 10 years. It was a vegetarian dining bar. I still hadn't turned vegan then but apart from cheese, I really didn't use anything else. It was mainly plant-based. So that's how I became a chef. I did that for 10 years and then after that I opened a school, a cooking school. I've been a cooking instructor for a very long time, about 20 years. And that's how it all began. And then I moved to Hawaii three and a half years ago and as they say, here we are. So, tell us about those dinner parties you've been having and how Sam Choi ended up going to your dinner party. I have actually been so humbled and so blessed to meet some of the best chefs here in Hawaii, two of which you just named Alan Wong and Sam Choi. They were introduced to me through friends and they've been to, I've cooked seven course vegan dinners for them quite a few times. I was also on Sam Choi's show cooking in the kitchen with Sam Choi. A few months ago, if you want to see that, just google Lillian Cumick, Sam Choi's in the kitchen and you'll see that show. So that was a lot of fun. I am actually fortunate to be meeting a lot of very influential people here in the culinary world and we're all bouncing ideas off of each other. But one thing that I do hear a lot when it comes to vegan food and the stuff that they're trying with me is they didn't know vegan food could be so good. So I think it's, you know, the more we spread the vegan love in restaurants and, you know, really try to get more vegan options in restaurants in non vegan restaurants in Hawaii. I think that's going to open up a lot of a lot of opportunities for people who dine out a lot to eat a little bit healthier. So something I'm very keen on getting involved in for sure, getting more vegan options onto restaurant menus. And how about the vegan show that you are going to develop any new updates on that? No. When that happens, it will be, yeah, it will be, I'll let you know, you'll be first. If viewers want to kind of learn about your cooking or get more information on recipes you make and see it live. Can you tell them about your YouTube channel and other ways they might be able to, I think you have a website as well for Axelian? Yes, sure. You can definitely reach me. I'm, I kind of go by the pseudo name Lillian Vegan. So if you Google Lillian Vegan, lots of things will come up. My webpage is also under that name. My webpage has links to all of my social media and my YouTube channel, which I must say I haven't been posting many recipe videos on recently as I have been quite busy doing other things. My YouTube channel does have about 200, around 200 recipe videos. I'm more active on my Facebook page and Instagram. Instagram again, it's Lillian Vegan underscore chef Hawaii. And my Facebook page also is Lillian Vegan. So Google Lillian Vegan and you should be able to find me. You can definitely reach out. I do a lot of things here. I do them a private, mostly privately booked events. So anytime I do like things like book signings at the Kakako farmers market, I'll post that and people can bring their books in if they want them signed or want to come and say aloha and have a little chat. I'm actually going to be at the Kakako farmers market this Saturday. I can't remember the date on the break this Saturday from 8am to 12pm. So I'm doing about once every two months. So definitely pop over and say hello, if you like. That sounds great. And I guess I'm really excited to taste some of your things I'm wondering if you're ever going to do a gluten free seven course dinner. Yeah, I first I have to convince the masses, because people who are not gluten free get a bit scared of the word gluten free just because they've had bad experiences with, with things tasting good. That's the only that's the only downfall about gluten free food. Again, going back to what we spoke about when it comes to gluten free baked goods like breads pastries rolls and stuff like that. That's where I think it's definitely an acquired taste. But when you think about vegan food in general, like, you know, the average stir fry, the salad, the tofu dish, the curries, things like that pretty much by default are normally gluten free. Yeah, yeah. So, yes, I will definitely keep that in mind for your grace once I can convince a few more people to come to it. Or maybe if you could just make cream puffs I'll buy them off you. Yeah, I know now you've got now you've got my interest hate for sure. Okay, so we're out of time. So we have to wrap it up, but I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill this is healthy planet on the think tech live streaming network series we've been talking with willing to make vegan chef and author. Thanks to Michael our broadcast engineer and the rest of our crew at think tech for hosting our show. And thanks to you our listeners for listening. I'll see you on August 5 for more healthy planet on think tech the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet. Thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at think tech Hawaii.com. Mahalo.