I HAD not heard of poutine till this year, but I’ve dined on it twice since May and I’m starting to see it all around the place.

It’s a dish of Canadian provenance - from Quebec to be specific. Poutine is a delicious and calorie-loaded assemblage of French fries and cheese curds, topped with a pouring of gravy: salty, fatty and stodgy. Some of the fries stay crispy, some go mushy with gravy, the cheese softens and melts, and all together the constituent parts merge into a delicious, satisfying and tasty mess.

Apparently poutine emerged in Quebec in the late 1950s, but it seems the dish is becoming increasingly popular far beyond the place of its origin. I have my daughters to thank for both encounters with poutine - the first time was in Vancouver, when my Canadian-living elder daughter took me to a poutine restaurant, and the second, somewhat closer to home, when vegan younger daughter birthday-treated me to a helping of poutine at Manchester’s fantastic Plant Powered Sundays organised by Grub, at the historic Mayfield site near the city centre. A whole host of different vegan street food vendors gathers together - shouldn’t we have something like this in Swindon? When I visited, the amazing Gravy Train Poutine was offering a menu of variations on the vegan poutine theme, and it is absolutely delicious.

But how can a plant-eater dine on a good poutine, when two of the key ingredients are cheese curds and gravy? How do you make a tasty vegan version, when you’re not in Quebec - or Manchester? I’ve been doing some research and it’s possible to find a variety of recipes online, but it is as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. With only three main ingredients - fries, cheese and gravy - you could just buy frozen fries, a vegan mozzarella (such as the melty, MozzaRisella - a rice-based, organic vegan mozzarella, with many glowing reviews), and make a gravy with one of the readily available vegetable stock cubes you can buy in the supermarket. Hey presto.

If you’re feeling a bit more ambitious, you can prepare your own fries from scratch, and concoct your own vegan mozzarella. Tempting online recipes include one (that’s also gluten free) on onegreenplanet.org and another on the popular website, minimalistbaker.com. Alternatively, if you’re vegan and happen to be in Manchester on a Sunday, see if Gravy Train Poutine is attending Mayfield. I promise you won’t regret it.