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Stem & Glory - Gloriously Plant-based Recipes
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
Aim
Limited edition copies of first book from award winning vegan restaurant brand Stem & Glory
Background:
Stem & Glory is a plant-based restaurant chain with two restaurants in London, and one in our home town of Cambridge. The business has been very successful in equity crowdfunding, raising £1.8M to date from 1643 individuals to build three restaurant sites and grow the business.
'When are you producing your recipe book?' is frequently asked question number one at our three restaurants, and so we are absolutely delighted to launch this- our first book- hoping it will be one of many.
Gloriously Plant-Based contains recipes for the bestselling dishes from our menus over the last five years. Recipes that teach techniques such as fermenting and how to create a depth of flavour often not found in plant-based food. Recipes that give you all the secrets to successful plant-based cooking.
You will access our chefs’ secret ingredients and store cupboard staples to take your plant-based cooking to a new level. Learn how to focus on sustainability, championing British grown produce and recipes that are as kind to our planet as they are to your palate!
Contents:
The book is in five sections:
Starters & Dips
Mains
Desserts & Cakes
Pickles & Ferments
On the Side
Our cookbook contains recipes exactly as they are served in our restaurants, including all the ferments, pickles, and dips that compliment each menu item. This means you really will be able to reproduce restaurant quality food at home that remains simple, healthy, and delicious.
Most of the recipes are accompanied by beautiful photos of the dishes as they are served in our restaurants, so you will know exactly what you can expect- though adding your own creative twist is always welcome too!
We are delighted to offer a range of exclusive rewards for the support and pre-orders of the book, for example our Book & Plating Workshop.
Thank you so much for being part of our ever-evolving journey!
Our Founder’s Story
It was in my late teens that I was introduced to the idea of compassionate eating for the first time. I gave up eating meat on the spot, and never looked back. It was an ‘aha’ moment that changed the course of my life for ever.
That was in 1984. Back then vegetarian was very fringe, and vegan was almost unheard of. I started searching for veggie and vegan cookbooks out there, and this was the start of my lifelong love of experimenting with plant-based foods. I discovered this could be super delicious as well as healthy, and fortunately the friends and family I was feeding thought so too!
Not long after I stopped eating meat and dairy, I spent a year in Asia and was blessed to then travel widely with one of my varied careers. This meant I got to sample plant-based dishes from literally all over the world. I was very fortunate to be able to travel with my work and everywhere I went, my hosts would find pockets of vegan food and proudly take me there. It was such a blessing, and I sampled so many novel foods and preparation techniques that were unknown at the time in the UK. My testing ground for honing my own skill continued to be my friends and my family, and as the years passed, it became easier and easier to source ingredients from all over the world in my hometown of Cambridge.
The idea of opening a restaurant was always rolling around in the back of my mind from the start of my plant-based journey. The delicious food I was cooking at home just wasn’t available in restaurants in the UK, and you would have to go to extraordinary lengths to get anything vegan. Eventually in 2010 I started experimenting with a vegan cafe within a local business, and then in the summer of 2016, the opportunity presented to open a full-blown eatery in Cambridge. We launched a Crowdfunder, and hey presto 3 weeks later we had raised £97,000 and the first Stem & Glory opened shortly after.
As soon as we opened the doors, people came flooding in. What we had originally envisaged as a lunch time cafe grew very quickly to a full-blown restaurant with a complete lunch and dinner service. We also started to offer fine dining events which were a sell-out. It was a hugely creative period for our brand: veganism hadn’t really been done like this before, and the people of Cambridge were amazingly supportive of what we were doing. It was clear that we were onto something.
Fast forward to the start of 2018, and we were gearing up to launch a much larger Crowdfunder, (this time an equity raise!), to open a flagship site in London.
We set a target of £350k, which we reached in under 5 hours after we launched. We went on to raise £610k, and Stem & Glory London Barts opened in January 2019.
In July 2019 Ed Al Subaei took over as our Executive Chef, and a new chapter of Stem & Glory began. Ed is of Lebanese heritage, but was born in Kuwait, and can only be described as a truly global citizen. His own culinary influences, and personal passion for healthy food has taken Stem & Glory to the next level. It’s been an enduring relationship through thick and thin (and Covid of course!), and the menus in our restaurants are constantly evolving under his influence and the creative work of his teams on the ground.
This book has a huge amount of Ed’s talent within its pages, but it also owes a big thank you to many more individuals whose creative energy and input has been a part of our growing story.
We opened our third site in London in November 2022, and now have eyes firmly on global expansion. We are excited to share our love of plant-based cuisine both with this book, and in a town near you very soon!
Lou Palmer-Masterton - founder of Stem & Glory
This project successfully funded on 29th March 2023