Vegetarian Bobotie

Whenever I’m back home from a trip, I always recreate a vegetarian recipe from the country I’ve just been to. I’ve made shakshuka after my trip to Israel and vegan Pad Thai after my trip to Thailand. A few months back I’ve been to South Africa, where people really like meat! I was able to find many vegetarian options in the country itself (I’ve listed my favorites here) but all their staples contained meat (bobotie, bunny chow, biltong…).
I decided I wanted to create a vegetarian version of Bobotie. Bobotie is probably the most well-known signature dish of South Africa, it’s an oven dish with minced meat and an egg-based topping.
When I was looking for vegetarian recipes, all of them contained lentils. And even though I’m a big fan of lentils, my boyfriend doesn’t really like them. I decided that the easiest way of creating a vegetarian Bobotie recipe is by simply substituting the minced meat for vegetarian minced meat! In my supermarket they have several veggie minced meat options, I went for one that was made from tofu but you can just go for the one you like.

The herbs make this dish very tasty! I’ve made a recipe for 2 portions, but you can easily double it if you want to make it for 4 people.

Ingredients (serves 2):
1 slice whole wheat bread
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 package vegetarian minced meat
2 ts curry powder
1 ts cloves
1/2 ts cinnamon
1/2 ts nutmeg
1 tbs mango chutney
1 tbs sultanas
3 bay leaves
1 egg
4 tbs plant based milk