Vegan Chicken B'stilla: French Fridays with Dorie

I said I had no idea where Morocco was, but if I could guess, maybe Spain? (I probably just lost what few readers I had admitting this.) But. Yep. I'll go with Spain. My husband, No, Kelly. . . it's in Africa. I said, Wanna bet? Really? A bet? To which DH then turned to the laptop and within a blink of an eye, we were looking at a nice bright green detail area clearly located in Northern Africa. Hmmm, I said to myself. Then, out loud, What is it with the French? (Well and if we are being totally honest here, What is it with public education that let me get to be Almost Fifty thinking Morocco was in Spain! Life with a really smart person can sometimes be such a downer.) 

We loved this dish! I mean LOVED it. First, from a seasoning standpoint: saffron, coriander, cinnamon. The trifecta of sublime gastronome delight. (There's some ginger in there, too--but seriously, I was more drawn to the others.) Grant it, I was put off by the amount of chicken the b'stilla called for: eight chicken thighs. Eight. So much so, I nearly skipped making this. But as I thumbed through the rest of the dishes in Dorie's Around My French Table, I knew that going into this French Friday group that I'd have some serious vegan edits to make, some serious challenges in front of me. Snap out of it, I told myself. Stand up and cook for the vegans! And cook and edit I did. But in my humble opinion, they were good edits. As for the filo dough--oh how I love the filo! No edits there. On the manner of physically finishing this dish, Dorie says to "flip" this, after baked, onto a plate. Right. There was no way in heck I was cooking this thing, THEN flipping it out and back over again onto a serving plate. Please. I watch cooking shows, I've seen catastrophe happen. I am quite clumsy, too. I didn't need to end my day with a trip to the ER for a burn. So I opted for my 9" springform pan. Call me chicken.

Let's talk about the stock. I imparted a flavor of dark veggie stock by way of my slowly cooking onions until they were crispy and brown around the edges. In another pan, I slow cooked cremini and shitake mushrooms sauteed in vegan butter until the mushrooms had released their juices and become a little brown around the edges, then set this aside. This mushroom mixture would act as part of my "chicken thigh" replacer. Next I added red cooking wine to the onions and reduced this. I then added about two cups veggie stock to my onion mixture, turning up the heat to a boil, then turned it down and whisked in pieces of veggie margerine one at a time until my stock/sauce began thickening. I saw that my "thickening" wasn't quite where I needed it to be--so I mixed in some water and cornstarch, this seemed to do the trick. Then added the shrooms to this mixture.

The traditional recipes for bastilla that I researched all seemed to have this one step which was included in Dorie's recipe calling for a mixture of eggs and honey. This was another challenge I had to overcome. I knew the eggs were going to give heft to the finished filling. But I really did nothing to my recipe involving any egg replacer--instead I focused on my stock and its texture. Plus, I am not big into sweet and savory, so this egg/honey business was not added to my finished dish. Perhaps I have just leapt out of contention for my dish even remotely being a bastilla.

. The veggies and sauce had this nice dark color and might I add, I could have served this whole pan of yum and eaten it as it was, but thought I'd get booed out of the group if that filo dough didn't make an appearance. You either love the filo or you hate it. It's worth repeating, I happen to love it. But I love any food dish that requires: covering, cradling or wrapping. I don't know where this comes from. Early fascination with the Pop Tart?  

My final dish looked nothing like the picture of Dorie's b'stilla--and nothing personal, but I found the photo of this dish in the cookbook to be not the most exciting food shot I'd ever seen--god love the the food art person who shot this. But it gave me enough of a base to work with in terms of what my version had to resemble upon completion.

By the end of dinner, we had one slice of this remaining!

So you see here my onions cooking. In for the chicken thighs were two Gardein Chicken patties. I love Gardein. For me this was a superb move. The patties held their shape after browning in the pan with the onions. Once they had browned, I removed them from the pan, then added them back into the sauce right before I layered my b'stilla. 

I actually had to brown two pans of mushrooms. After I got to thinking about it, I thought some shitake mushrooms might be nice as well. As for flavoring up my b'stilla for the lack of chicken thighs present in my vegan version, I would highly recommend the shrooms.

You have to be a lover of almonds for this dish as well. Lucky for me, I am. After I had my first layer of filo down, you spread it with sliced almonds. Then, after filling it, you add another layer of almonds on top. The texture this imparted was perfect. Just perfect. Again, quite a vegan challenge, but I loved the end. For more French Fridays with Dorie b'stilla, click here.