I MAY be a green vegan, just finding my way in a brave new world of plant-eating, but this week I am talking to an expert in the art of vegan cuisine: restaurant founder Louise Palmer-Masterton.

Her restaurant Stem + Glory has been named Best Restaurant in Cambridge in the British Restaurant Awards. Not best vegan restaurant, note, but best overall restaurant – demonstrating that even though everything they serve is 100 per cent plant-based, the food is award-winningly delicious. Louise wants to tempt people to the vegan way of life through tantalising their taste buds.

She tells me she’s been a vegetarian for 35 years – since her teens – and that her a-ha moment came from a meeting with a Krishna devotee.

“I learnt about compassionate eating, and I’ve never eaten meat since,” she says.

Louise ate lots of raw food, and gradually moved to a vegan diet, and when I ask her for some tips has some advice about building the contents of a useful vegan larder.

“Vegetables – obviously!” she says. “They’re critical to the whole vegan thing. You can do wonderful things with them, but you want things to taste really good, and highly flavoured, you can add ingredients like olives, tomato paste, seeds, herbs – fresh as much as possible, capers, sun-dried tomatoes.

“These keep you coming back for more. You have to make food that is delicious.”

Louise suggests making tasty dressings, and stocking up on ingredients like tahini, miso, balsamic vinegars, maple syrup and whole dates.

“It’s no longer seen as a freaky thing, and it’s a big step to win the award,” she says.

“Most of our customers are not vegetarians or vegans.”

Her passion for healthy and delicious plant-based food, and a desire to win people to the vegan movement by offering them lots of delicious plant-based alternatives, grew over 35 years of culinary experimentation. The restaurant was set up after a successful crowd-funding campaign and won a Best Newcomer Award in 2017.

Louise reckons the move to a plant-based diet will be a gradual one for many people, as they discover that vegan food can be delicious and satisfying.

And if you aren’t going to Cambridge anytime soon, you can find vegan recipes for Raw Pad Thai and vegan mac’n’cheese on the website at stemandglory.uk.