Moroccan Flavors Go Plant Based

Moroccan food is a treasure trove of plant based flavors. Their traditional dishes, like tagine, are usually graced with plenty of vegetables, spices, sweet and tart balance, and fresh herbs. When I visit Moroccan restaurants, though, the vegetarian tagine is usually pretty bland, while the meat based dishes get all the attention. That is why I like to make my own versions of Moroccan food, and borrow the combinations from the meaty recipes and use them to make spectacularly tasty plant based dishes.

Like this Moroccan B’Stilla. Based on a pie usually made with poultry, this one is packed with dried fruit, spices, chickpeas, almonds, and a hit of coconut milk and lemon. Instead of the hard-to-find Brik pastry, I used easy to get filo dough, and basted it with refined coconut oil instead of butter. The result is a gorgeous, bronzed ruffle of crisp filo, encasing an intense, sweet-savory filling.

I think you are going to love it.

Crispy Filo is Easy and Beautiful

If you’ve worked with filo, you know it is usually based with butter. Filo is a paper-thin sheet of smooth flour and water dough, and when you stack it up with a sweep of oil in between the sheets, it bakes up into a fantastically crisp pastry. My earliest experiences with filo were in a restaurant kitchen, making large pans of spanakopita. Of course we basted the sheets with butter, and I though that was the only way to do it. It was the 90’s before I started playing with using other fats in place of butter, to great success. Olive oil works well, although the final product is a little less crisp. Coconut oil is my favorite plant-based solution, because it produces a nice, crisp pastry, and it stays nice and crunchy for a surprisingly long time after baking.

Prunes are Dried Plums

The fun thing about this pie is the surprise of biting into dried fruit in the same dish as chickpeas and onions. The deep, concentrated flavors of dried apricots and prunes really give it some wieght, which is balanced with lemon zest and juice.

I hope we can all embrace the prune as a delicious food, and stop thinking of it as “Senior” food. Yes, it’s full of fiber, but it’s not just for “moving things along.”

If you’re a plant-based eater, this is a keeper- it will impress your friends and family, no matter their diet-style.

That’s a win-win in my book.