Vegetarian recipes from Colombia

The base of meat-free Colombian cooking is maize, in two distinct forms: the precooked corn flour behind the arepa, a flatbread cooked on a dry griddle and eaten at breakfast as readily as at supper, and whole ground maize wrapped in a leaf, like the Caribbean coast bollo limpio, boiled and served as a side. Alongside it, green plantain plays the fried-starch role: patacones are cut thick, fried once, flattened, then fried again into a crisp disc. The dominant fat is vegetable oil, not butter.

Meal structure follows the altitude of the country. On the high plateau around Bogota, where mornings are cold, changua opens the day: milk, water, spring onion, coriander, a poached egg and stale bread torn into it. Lunch is built around a soup and then a plate where rice, plantain and a pulse hold together. Sweet things stay modest and are often fried, like Colombian bunuelos, balls of fresh cheese and cassava starch browned in oil, with no meat and no animal stock, unlike much of the everyday table.