A Vegan Moroccan Feast

We were recently invited to a friend's house for a truly spectacular Chinese dinner. The host is a vegan and had prepared everything from steamed dumplings to cake, all without so much as a sniff of meat, egg or dairy products. I was impressed, but the meal also presented me with a problem: when hosting a meal in turn, how was I to cook something suitably impressive? I mostly cook vegetarian meals but have little experience cooking to vegan requirements.

I relish a good challenge and thoroughly enjoy trying to meet odd requirements. I've variously deprived my cooking of all sugars, fats, gluten and other such ingredients for a week or two at a time just to see what happened. So I approached this "problem" in much the same way.

First, I had to choose a theme. My usual go-to cuisines were off the list: Chinese and "Southeast Asian" would both have felt like imitations of her banquet; I briefly contemplated Italian but then realised I would have to omit cheese; my Mexican favourites, too, would suffer from a lack of dairy. So I went with Moroccan, largely because it let me cook one of my all-time favourite dishes, which just happens to be a vegan recipe already.

I looked around the net for some inspiration, set myself a menu and went about concocting recipes with every trace of egg or dairy removed. The resulting menu is below. To save this being a ridiculously long post, I've linked to the recipes separately rather than writing them all out in full here.

Entrees were dips and flatbread, a simple affair... or so I thought. One, a spicy carrot dip, was easily prepared the day before and stored in the fridge overnight. But the second dip proved a challenge. I wanted to have a sharp dip to balance the sweet carrot, and that could also accompany the main courses. I would usually make a yogurt-based dip to achieve this, but that wasn't an option with dairy off the cards. Instead of thinking up a different style of dip, I opted to create a dairy-free substitute for yogurt. It was a laborious process, and one that I have no interest in repeating, but eventually I manage to produce a reasonably tasty mint and "yogurt" dip.

For the main course, I dug out a favourite whose recipe I was given last summer: Winter Vegetable Tagine. I'd share the recipe here, but I'm under orders not to give it to anyone else... so I guess that one remains unpublished. The accompanying dishes are under no such restrictions. As has become traditional whenever making this particular tagine, I prepared a spiced rice dish, studded with nuts and currants. Since it promised to be a warm evening, a chickpea and couscous salad seemed an appropriate addition.

The next challenge came in the form of dessert. Again, because of the promised weather, I wanted something cold. Icecream sprang to mind, but suffers from a terrible case of containing cream. Sorbet? Egg whites, I'm afraid. So it had to be something different, and still fit into the Moroccan theme. I decided to experiment with using coconut cream to make icecream and, because the idea appealed to me, went for a rose-flavoured coconut icecream. This was only vaguely Moroccan in theme, so I added a honey and mint syrup cake to the mix.

Well, that wraps up the menu. Generally, I found it pretty easy to find vegan substitutes for ingredients. The exceptions being yogurt and, quite surprisingly, butter. I may have to explore the issue further in another post, but I was certainly shocked to discover how many dairy-free spreads are flavoured using dairy products. Vegetarian food may be fairly mainstream and easy to shop for in the supermarket, but clearly vegan has some way to go yet before its ingredients are so easily obtained.