Those familiar with Middle Eastern cuisine will find nothing surprising about the idea of a meatless moussaka – the versions found in Syria and Lebanon are a feast of tomatoes, aubergines and pulses, rich and silky with olive oil, and without a drop of bechamel in sight. Even in Greece, the 200-odd fasting days a year mandated by the Orthodox church mean that plant-based cuisine is more common than the casual visitor surviving on souvlaki and sea bass might imagine. The modern Greek moussaka, however, is a firmly meat-and-dairy affair, but thankfully for those who eschew animal products all year round, it doesn’t have to be.
The sauce
Clearly the main problem to solve here is going to be how to replace a sauce whose predominant flavour is meat – be that lamb, beef or pork – with something equally umami-rich, but meat-free. The obvious answer is vegan mince – Marie Laforêt uses soy protein in her Vegan Bible, which works well from a textural point of view, but I’d prefer the base to be something less processed and tastier in its own right.
The two most popular options seem to be pulses (black beans and chickpeas for celebrity chef and author Diane Kochilas, brown lentils for celebrity chef and author Theo Michaels, red for celebrity chef and author Akis Petretzikis) and mushrooms (white for Michaels, shiitake for Notting Hill’s modern Greek restaurant Mazi). Mushrooms, of course, win on the flavour front, but I find they require dilution with something starchier to stop them taking over proceedings entirely: I’d like the finished dish to be savoury, but not distinctively mushroomy.
Brown lentils feel like the best pairing: visually this is important – Petretzikis’ orange sauce, for example, is delicious, but it’s also confusing because it means the dish ends up looking more like a vegetable lasagne. It’s important texturally, too, because they retain their shape well enough to mimic mince, but not so much that it’s like eating a bean stew. Be sure to brown the mushrooms well, as Michaels dictates, for maximum flavour.
Unlike, say, an Italian ragu, moussaka sauces tend to be fairly minimal, seasoned with onions and garlic, and sometimes celery. Yellow onions are preferable to the sweetness of red or shallots when you’re trying to keep things as savoury as possible, but we find the strength of the garlic powder in Mazi’s recipe a bit much; with so few flavours involved, it’s preferable to keep them all in balance.
Oregano, for me, is the flavour of Greece, so, like Kochilas, Michaels and Petretzikis, I’ll be using it in quantity, along with sweet cinnamon, as well as bay to amp up the herbaceous notes. You could also add thyme (Michaels and Petretzikis), but personally I can’t see the point of the dried basil that Laforêt adds to the mix; the same goes for the fresh parsley stirred into two of the sauces during cooking, not least because it leaves no trace in the finished dish. Nutmeg, cloves and allspice all pop up, too, but I’m saving the first for the bechamel, and the rest seem more like optional extras.
Some recipes compensate for the lack of gravy by amping up the tomato element, often confined to a dollop of puree in traditional Greek moussakas along with some tinned tomatoes. I will be adding some, because every little umami helps, but I’d prefer them not to dominate, either, so I’ll also be sloshing in Kochilas’ red wine (rather than Mazi and Petretzikis’ more delicate white), plus a spoonful of Laforêt’s barley miso paste. (Having sought this out, I can confirm that, though all miso varieties have distinct flavour profiles, here we’re just after their top-line, savoury oomph, so feel free to substitute whichever you have, or can easily access, with the caveat that some white misos can be quite sweet. Alternatively, you get a similar, if not quite so richly satisfying effect with Laforêt’s tamari soy sauce, or indeed my own beloved Marmite.)
You shouldn’t need to add any sugar – Kochilas’ combination of balsamic and petimezi, or grape molasses, gives her sauce a sweet-and-sour quality that feels odd in this context – but, as ever, taste and see.
The bechamel
The defining characteristic of a Greek moussaka since Nikolas Tselementes’ influential cookbook of 1932, a bechamel should be easy enough to make vegan simply by replacing butter with olive oil (which tastes far better than margarine) and dairy milk with a plant-based one, as Laforêt recommends – I don’t even think you need her vegetable stock, given the blandness of the original. Be careful about the milk you use, however: some are unpleasantly sweet (coconut, for example) and/or watery, which makes them slow to thicken.
That said, plant milk is not the only option: Petretzikis makes a richly creamy mashed-potato topping for another meat-free moussaka, and it works surprisingly well, while Astali Rasidaki piques my interest with a Lenten recipe from her dad on Instagram that involves a batter made from olive oil, water, garlic and vinegar, and that proves extremely moreish, if unsurprisingly less creamy than one made with “milk”. Kochilas, meanwhile, achieves impressively puffy results by whipping up the cooking water from a tin of chickpeas into a foam, then stirring this into her sauce for a souffléd effect. For me, a dense blanket of bechamel is a key pleasure of this dish, but if you’d prefer a lighter result, and have some aquafaba handy, give it a go.
The vegetables
A different filling demands different treatment, and the recipes I try vary in this respect. As well as the near-mandatory aubergine, Michaels and Petretzikis use courgette, and almost everyone adds potatoes, too, which in this instance feel like a satisfying way to anchor the dish. (Kochilas uses the sweet variety, which again I find too sweet, while Mazi goes for a layer of dauphinoise, which is both popular with testers and very rich. Classic restaurant food, in other words.)
Baking the vegetable stata, as Kochilas suggests, is usually my preference for moussaka, a dish that can tend towards the heavy, but without the meat fat, frying (the more traditional preparation) is an easy way to add some much-needed richness. I don’t think you need to flour the slices first, as Petretzikis does (though I like his idea of sprinkling oregano between the layers), but I always recommend salting aubergines, even if they retain very little in the way of their ancestral bitterness, because, like Laforêt, I believe it brings out the flavour.
Shallow frying is less of a faff than Mazi and Petretzikis’ deep-frying, which feels unnecessary because a certain crispness is not the aim here, but you could also use a griddle pan, if you prefer. (However, I find this gives fairly similar results to baking, however assiduously you brush them with oil, so it’s not my preference.) If you happen to have a courgette and want to add more vegetables, then slice, fry and layer one along with all the rest.
As ever with moussaka, it is best served warm, rather than hot, and even better the next day.
Perfect vegan moussaka
Prep 15 min
Cook 2 hr 15 min
Serves 4
Salt and black pepper
2 aubergines
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for frying
1 yellow onion, peeled and finely chopped
250g chestnut or white mushrooms, chopped into small chunks
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
1 tsp dried oregano, plus a little extra for the aubergines
2 tbsp tomato puree
200g dry brown lentils
75ml red wine
1 x 400g tin tomatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
1 tbsp barley miso paste, or other miso paste
About 300g waxy potatoes, peeled if dirty, thinly sliced
For the bechamel
75g olive oil
75g flour
600ml unsweetened plant milk
Nutmeg
Cut the aubergines into long, thin slices, sprinkle with salt, then put in a colander and leave to sit while you make the sauce.
Put the oil in a wide pan on a medium-low heat, then fry the onion until soft. Stir in the mushrooms, fry until they start to give off their liquid, then turn up the heat and fry, stirring regularly so they don’t catch and burn, until the pan is dry and the mushrooms golden.
Turn down the heat a little, stir in the garlic, cinnamon and herbs, and fry for another couple of minutes. Stir in the tomato puree, fry for another minute or so, then stir in the lentils to coat.
Add the wine and leave to bubble away until reduced by about half. Add the tomatoes and stock, turn down the heat and leave to simmer for about an hour, until the lentils are cooked and the sauce is rich and thick.
Stir in the miso, taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary, then fish out and discard the cinnamon and bay leaves (if you can find them, that is).
Meanwhile, cover the base of a frying pan with olive oil and set it on a medium-high heat. Once hot, pat the aubergines dry and fry them in batches until soft and golden, replenishing the oil as necessary.
Once cooked, put them on kitchen paper to drain. Once all the aubergines are fried, repeat the process with the potatoes, cooking them until soft and lightly golden.
Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. To make the bechamel, heat the oil in a small saucepan, then stir in the flour to make a paste. Fry for a couple of minutes, then gradually whisk in the milk and cook gently, stirring all the time, until thickened. Season with salt and grated nutmeg to taste.
Lightly grease the base of a medium baking dish, then cover with the potatoes and season lightly with salt and a teaspoon of oregano.
Spoon over the sauce, then top with the aubergines and season with a little more oregano. Spoon the bechamel all over the top and level it out.
Bake for about 45 minutes, until golden, then remove and leave to cool to warm before serving.
Meat-free moussaka: is it in keeping with Greek fasting traditions, or a contradiction in terms? Or would you always choose the Middle Eastern versions anyway, and, if so, whose recipe would you recommend?
