Chicken-free tikka masala: Vegan MoFo

So convinced was I of this dish's English origins, that I went ahead and cooked it for MoFo before really looking into it.

That dish is tikka masala – usually chicken, but sometimes veggies, cooked in a thick sauce of spices, tomatoes and yoghurt.

As the name rather gives away, it's an Anglo-Indian dish – an old Indian dish tweaked to make it more acceptable to the English palate. Or that's what I thought, anyway – turns out the origins of tikka masala are both old and twisty.

Depending on who you listen to, it's either a dish that was created for the Mughal emperor Babur several centuries ago (rumour has it he was afraid of choking on chicken bones so had all his meat cut into small chunks – a feature of the tikka), or was invented in the Punjab within the last 50 years.

Others say it was made in the UK when a customer in an Indian restaurant found his curry too dry and asked for some sauce with it. Depending on who you ask, either tomato soup or cream was added, and the tikka masala was born.

There's also much debate about where the sauce-adding miracle occurred: Glasgow has made its case for being the birthplace of tikka masala, as have Birmingham and London. (Being a capital dweller, I'm backing London's bid: apparently, the Gaylord restaurant in Covent Garden had a dish called tandoori chicken masal on its menu in 1968.)

But wherever it came from and however it was adapted to suit British tastes, the tikka masala is pretty much England's national dish. Seriously – politicians have even proclaimed it as such, using it as an avatar of multiculturalism. You can't go into an Indian restaurant without seeing it on the menu, or walk into a supermarket without it taking pride of place on the ready-meal shelf.

Alas, it's always chicken. Clearly, a vegan version is vastly preferable. I used this BBC recipe (chicken, alas), but swapped the meat for Cauldron tofu pieces and the yoghurt for a vegan equivalent.

The recipe's actually not too hard to make: blend up spices, chilli, garlic and ginger to a paste. Fry some onions, add the paste, some chopped peppers, chopped tomatoes and tomato puree, and the tofu, and leave to simmer for 20 minutes. Then stir in your vegan yoghurt, and you're good to go.

When I made this the other half went nuts for it, and I was surprised at how much it resembled the tikkas I remember.

Having made it at home, I can see why this one's a stone cold classic.