Chickpea ‘chuna’ with jacket potatoes, a punchy peanut and black-eyed- pea stew, barbecue cauliflower smothered in jerk spices – these are just some of the vibrant vegan dishes that have made Rachel Ama a star in the food world, with over 60,000 Instagram followers and 250,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, which has been running for less than two years.

The London-based recipe creator stirs her Caribbean and African roots (as well as her grandmother’s Welsh heritage) into platefuls of crispy fritters, curried soups and spiced chickpea waffles, while sharing tips – and a cook-along music playlist – for a meat-free lifestyle.

Full of encouragement for those on the hunt for healthy recipes, Rachel is three years into a vegan diet herself.

Once a self-confessed KFC addict, she looked to her mother’s wholesome cooking as a remedy for her fast-food fixation. ‘I was brought up to enjoy food,’ she writes in her debut cookbook, Rachel Ama’s Vegan Eats, ‘and I didn’t want that to change just because I was no longer eating animal products.’

She takes classics such as lasagne and kebabs and updates them for a flexitarian audience, ‘experimenting with the same seasonings and spices but using plant-based food’. And with delicious, protein-heavy ingredients at their core, her dishes will win over carnivores, too.

To order​ ‘Rachel Ama’s Vegan Eats’ by Rachel Ama (Ebury Press, £20) for £16.99 plus p&p, visit books. telegraph.co.uk