Lazy Cat Kitchen Interview With Ania Marcinowska

Today, I’m excited to sit down with Ania, the creative genius behind the beloved site Lazy Cat Kitchen. Her blog masterfully mixes wholesome and indulgent recipes, drawing you in not just with her exceptional dishes but also with her heartfelt personality and approachable style.

Ania Marcinowska is a name you might already recognize if you’re familiar with Lazy Cat Kitchen. Ania’s blog stands out as one of the best vegan blogs celebrated for her exceptional ability to create visually stunning and unique plant-based dishes. What makes her blog particularly appealing is not just the recipes themselves, but also the way she connects with her audience through engaging writing and the charming appeal of her beautiful website design.

I first discovered Ania’s work when I stumbled across her vegan hazelnut mousse and was immediately captivated by her creativity, meticulous attention to detail, and warm, relatable writing style. I love finding great great vegan recipes but also want to feel a connection to their creator. Lazy Cat Kitchen masterfully blends both, creating a beautiful space to be inspired by and get delightfully lost in.

Ania’s dishes are deeply rooted in the traditions of her Polish upbringing, where food was a central pillar of family life. Her grandmothers helped play a significant role in shaping her approach to cooking. These early experiences, surrounded by the love and care invested in each meal, instilled in Ania a profound appreciation for the power of food to bring people together. This foundation, coupled with a curiosity for global dishes, has shaped her unique approach to vegan cooking.

Upon moving to London, Ania’s culinary horizons expanded, inspired by the city’s vibrant diversity. However, it was her transition to veganism, sparked by a move to a small Greek island with limited vegan resources, that her creativity blossomed.

The challenges of adapting to a plant-based lifestyle in a place where vegan options were scarce led to the birth of Lazy Cat Kitchen—a platform where Ania could share her passion for vegan cooking with a global audience. The blog’s name, inspired by the lazy cats that accompanied her cooking while in Greece, reflects the ethos of simplicity and joy that Ania brings to her cooking.

Lazy Cat Kitchen has emerged as a guiding light for those seeking inspiration in vegan food, offering over 800 recipes that showcase Ania’s innovative approach to food. Her recipes are a celebration of seasonal produce, global flavors, and the simple pleasure of creating beautiful, nourishing meals. Through her blog, Ania serves up some of the best plant-based food you can find to an engaged community hungry for wholesome yet indulgent food.

Ania’s story is a testament to the transformative power of food. From the nostalgic flavors of her Polish childhood to the creative expanse that vegan cooking opened up, her work on Lazy Cat Kitchen invites us to explore the rich possibilities that plant-based ingredients have to offer.

As I virtually sit down with Ania today, it’s clear that her passion for cooking is more than just about food—it’s about creating experiences that create joy and connection, one dish at a time.

When did you start cooking? What aspect of cooking has kept you interested?

Making food and getting together to eat has been massively important in my family of origin, both my grandmas were amazing cooks – I grew up in Poland where cooking and baking was (still is) the domain of women.

My paternal grandma was an undisputed pierogi (Polish filled dumplings) queen and since we all lived in one big house and my parents worked, my gran would look after me and my brother in the afternoons. I therefore spent many hours at her kitchen table, watching her hand roll all kinds of dough. The dough for pierogi, homemade pasta, apple noodle Kugel and Ukrainian pierog – a yeasted dough pie filled with cheese, onion, and potato mixture baked, cut into triangles, and eaten dipped in cold clotted cream.

Vegan spinach ricotta pierogi. — Vegan spinach and ricotta pierogi | Photo credit: Lazy Cat Kitchen

My mum was also a very creative cook, she was always very curious about new flavours and flavour combinations and she instilled in me and my brother a deep love of vegetables of all kinds. I think I absorbed all of that, the care and effort that went into food, the emphasis on fresh and seasonal produce.

We didn’t have access to convenience foods when I was growing up and I still don’t really use them. I came to London in my early twenties for a gap year and stayed, I loved how multicultural it was, how vibrant and that’s where my interest in food and cooking for myself really started.

Going vegan simply reinforced that passion. I went vegan when living on a small Greek island where there were hardly any vegan substitutes at all and people didn’t quite understand what vegan was. I had to meet a local health store owner on a street corner to get ten packets of tofu that she ordered specifically for me from Athens. This unavailability of vegan substitutes has certainly forced me to be more creative.

How do you approach recipe development and what inspires your creative ideas? Could you also share any challenges you face in this process?

For the most part, I make recipes based on things I personally like to eat. I get inspired by seasonal produce, travelling, and eating in good vegan eateries and restaurants. My main challenge is that while I love baking and coming up with sweet recipes, I also have a massive sweet tooth and that’s where the problem lies.

Each time I test a sweet recipe (and that usually takes several iterations) I tend to overindulge and then feel terrible about myself. I cannot bring myself to bin food as it goes against everything I have been taught.

After trying a few things, I attempted to solve this problem by setting up a cake giveaway group in my neighbourhood. This helps a lot but even though the doorbell rings pretty quickly after I post that something is up for grabs, there are always some messy offcuts that look too bad to give away and these tend to land in my belly.

This January I challenged myself to quit sugar and I’m still sticking to it, which is amazing and totally unexpected. I feel fantastic but the thought of never baking again or creating another dessert does make me feel sad so once I am more entrenched in this lifestyle, I am hoping to be able to make a sweet recipe now and again without falling off the wagon completely. We shall see how it goes.

Vegan Jagodzianki, cut open to show the interior. — Vegan Jagodzianki – Polish blueberry buns | Photo credit: Lazy Cat Kitchen

How would you describe your cooking style?

I have a very eclectic style, I tend to create what I personally enjoy eating and my taste is shaped by a wide range of different experiences – my childhood in Poland, living in London and a lot of travelling in my twenties and living in Greece in my thirties.

In terms of savoury dishes, I like big flavours, but I always try to keep things fairly healthy so I use oil sparingly, for example. In terms of desserts, I used to feel that if you are going to have a dessert you may as well make it indulgent although now my perspective may change, not consuming sugar does change your taste buds massively.

What’s the story behind your blog name, Lazy Cat Kitchen?

When me and my now husband moved to Greece, we found ourselves fostering cats as there were so many unloved strays around that you could not help but get involved. Cats are not known for their work ethic, they sleep during the day (especially in a hot climate like Greece) and prowl during the night so while I was cooking I often had a sleepy feline slumped on a chair in my kitchen for hours. That’s what inspired the name. My husband came up with it and we both felt that it was a great fit.

Could you describe the best dish you’ve ever made?

I am not sure, I have over 800 recipes on the website now so it’s quite hard to pick one I like the most. For me good food is about fresh, flavourful ingredients and satisfying flavour and texture contrasts that make your tastebuds excited about each bite.

I like to think that my dishes nourish and satisfy people – especially since vegan food continues to be associated with deprivation. It makes me insanely happy when people write to me saying ‘my non-vegan xxx could not get enough of this dish’.

Two dishes that I was really happy to veganise are nostalgic dishes that remind me of home and they both happen to be sweet. The first one is soft nougat. My maternal grandma – who was a massive foodie and who loved similar flavours to me – loved all things nuts. Every Christmas she would go to a lot of trouble to source thick slabs of nougat from the best Italian deli in Krakow.

Vegan nougat being cut by hand. — Vegan nougat | Photo credit: Lazy Cat Kitchen

I also managed to veganise her delicious gingerbread layer cake last Christmas, the flavour of which almost brought a tear to my eye. It is the type of cake that is made weeks ahead of Christmas as it needs time to mature and for the flavours to develop. It’s one of my family’s firm favourites and I am chuffed to be able to make it vegan now.

A vegan gingerbread layer cake with buttercream frosting. — Vegan gingerbread cake with custard buttercream | Photo credit: Lazy Cat Kitchen

If you could cook with anyone in the kitchen, who would it be?

I would love to be able to go back in time and cook with both of my grandmas and have a chance to connect with them a bit more. I don’t know what they would make of my veganism, but I think they would come around eventually (my mum eats almost exclusively plant-based now) and we would bond over our love of good food.

If you could host a dream party, who would be there and what would the menu look like?

I would invite all of my and my husband’s friends who live all over the world and I think a good idea would be to get some really good catering in. I am not great with dinner parties, I tend to take too much on as I have this perpetual worry at the back of my head that people will go hungry otherwise and I end up a nervous wreck on the day.

What’s one ingredient and kitchen gadget you can’t live without?

That’s so hard, I cannot possibly name one … I guess maybe mushrooms, I love mushrooms, I always have. They remind me of home (Poland is big on mushrooms and on foraging for them too) and I am fascinated by them, they are such cool organisms.

In terms of gadgets, I am simple. I love my carbon wok – I use it every day – and my cast iron skillet … it’s hard to pick sides.