NOTE: check out my new, improved recipe for vegan moussaka here. A while ago, I set myself a challenge of making a plant-based version of a quintessentially meaty dish: moussaka. After all, I live in Greece now and I didn’t want to give up eating this deliciously fragrant dish. I knew I can make a vegetarian ragu easily so that was a no-brainer, but the topping (rich bechamel sauce that traditionally relies on butter, milk and sometimes eggs) was going to be the tricky part.
My initial thought was to simply swap butter for some local olive oil and dairy milk for homemade almond milk and it did yield a very tasty result. The issue was, however, that despite using loads of oil and tons of flour, I ended up with just a thin layer of bechamel, which did not look like moussaka I’ve eaten here before. I explored doubling the quantities of both oil and flour, but I couldn’t get over how many additional calories a sauce like that adds to the dish – about 250 kCal per piece. I nearly reconciled with having just a thin layer of bechamel on my moussaka when an idea popped into my head. I was preparing cauliflower for dinner and it suddenly struck me that this humble vegetable has such delicate taste and virtually no colour (I know, white is a colour, but you know what I mean) that perhaps it could lend itself well to bulking up my bechamel without anyone noticing. Sneaking veggies into food, it’s happened – I’m turning into my mum. I disclosed my revelation to Duncan and he was up in arms. “Why would you do that?”, he said. “Why do you always need to make everything healthy?”. Fair comment, I said, but I still wanna give it a go before I dismiss it completely. I’m so glad I did. I’m pleased to say that Mr Cauliflower – apologies for hating you with passion as a kid – did work wonders. It bulked up the sauce without altering the taste and even its fiercest critic was happy to devour a triple portion of moussaka for dinner. If you still aren’t convinced and are not freaked out by the humongous fat content (or need to gain weight quickly), simply double the amounts of oil and flour and add a touch more milk to end up with a rich moussaka topping. NOTE: check out my new, improved recipe for vegan moussaka here.
4 medium eggplants, sliced lengthwise into ½ cm slices 4 medium potatoes
BECHAMEL
7 tbsp olive oil 7 tbsp white flour 7 tbsp cauliflower purée* 2 and ¼ cups almond milk, warmed up 2 tbsp nutritional yeast (optional) grated nutmeg, to taste 1 tbsp lemon juice ½ tsp salt, plus to taste pepper, to taste
BECHAMEL
- To make cauliflower purée, divide washed cauliflower (you need about ½ medium cauliflower) into florets, and cook them in a pot of salted water until tender (about 6 min). Blitz into a purée using a hand blender. Alternatively, skip the cauliflower completely and increase the amount of oil and flour to 12 tablespoons for a more indulgent béchamel. ** Nutritional yeast is by no means necessary. It adds a slightly cheesy flavour so if you have it add it in and if you don’t, skip. It is important, however, not to confuse it with baking yeast as making this mistake will result in a nasty tasting béchamel.
