Any vegan Mennonites in this sub? I need your help with a quest to recreate and veganize a childhood favourite.

Hey everyone, So, my dad is culturally mennonite (not so much religiously) and if you know mennonites, you know that 1) mennonite girls can cook and 2) mennonite food is packed with butter, eggs and meat. I guess it was all about packing on fat for surviving long, cold winters.

So, being a good mennonite girl (lol, not even a little. Okay, a little, because I can cook and I've got me some wide birthin' hips) I want to recreate one of my childhood favourite dishes, my dad's specialty, for him to enjoy. I'm talking about vegan vareniki. They're not "just pierogies". The vareniki I grew up with was a cottage cheese filling inside a tender dough, hand filled and cut with an upside down drinking glass and hand pinched to create a seam. They were served with an absurdly rich white gravy, which was essentially heavy cream, butter and salt. It was always served with a side of farmers sausage and fried onions.

Forgive my euphemistic language - normally I would describe the ingredients as what they are: cow secretions and pig flesh. But I wanted to convey the textures and flavours they had so I used conventional food names for those things.

So I would love some help with veganizing this recipe to re-create it as closely as possible. Particularly the cottage cheese filling and white gravy. The sausage will be easy- I'll just make seitan and fried onions. But how would one create the texture of dry-curd cottage cheese, but vegan? Any ideas for using tofu, soaked and mashed nuts, or something else? And for the gravy, I worry that coconut milk would impart too much of a coconutty flavour. Lastly, any recommendations for a vegan dumpling dough that will stand up to rolling, pinching and boiling without falling apart?

I'm willing to be a bit spendy for ingredients if necessary, but would love suggestions that are tried and tested rather than being wasteful with expensive experimentation. I do have ener-g on hand, and I expect it will be handy for binding the filling, which I remember included eggs.

If there are any Mennonite vegans out there who remember eating this dish, which was definitely a family tradition for me growing up, I'd love to have your recommendations and advice. I'm wishing I had a vegan granny to phone up and ask, but alas, my grandmother "doesn't believe in veganism. why don't you eat some real food?" Ugh.