Vegan Pizza is delicious!

So I turned my hand at making my own pizza last week. 

Well not quite real pizza... but close enough! I used the recipe from an old favourite - Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. His recipe calls for a mug full of self raising flour and half a mug of water. Now you either need a gigantic pan for this or you need to split it in two. I did the latter on my first attempt. You mix the flour and water together until it forms a very wet dough, dust the work top with plenty of flour (be very generous!) and knead a little until it comes together like a pizza dough. Add oil to a frying pan and heat it up. Roll out your dough to the thickness you like then transfer to the frying pan to brown the bottom. Jamie’s book suggests putting the pizza under the grill to cook the top, but I put mine on a pizza tray and put it in a hot oven. It probably took longer but the results were worth it.

On my first attempt I went with some classic flavours. Tomato base, a few slices of salami, freshly sliced mozzarella and some fresh basil. It looked so delicious I managed to burn the roof of my mouth on the hot cheese! But tonight I tried something different - a vegan version. 

I’ve been reading and watching a lot of things about plant based diets and want to try and incorporate more of that type of food into my diet, for health, environmental and ethical reasons. I had seen a post on Instagram of someone making a spinach and artichoke pizza, and I wanted to try making vegan cheese from cashews so I just decided to do both at once.

I made up the dough as described above, and cooked some freshly diced tomatoes in a shallow frying pan. I seasoned these with salt, pepper, garlic granules and Italian seasoning and reduced them to a thick sauce. I spread this in the middle of the base. I then added some chopped spinach on top of the tomatoes (I used frozen chopped spinach that had defrosted and it worked just fine) and some artichokes from a jar. I drained off the olive oil that they were soaked in. Then I added a few dollops of the cashew cheese. 

For this I used soaked cashews (you’re supposed to soak them overnight but I did it for about 5 hours so it’s probably not quite as smooth as it could have been). I put these in my blender, seasoned with salt, pepper, onion and garlic granules then added some unsweetened almond milk. I blitzed it and added more almond milk until I got the right consistency. I’ve stored this in a jar in the fridge.

A lot of recipes add nutritional yeast as it gives a cheesy flavour (or so I’ve read!) but I didn’t have a chance to get any before trying this recipe out. Maybe next time!

I put my pizza in the oven for about 20-30 minutes to let the crust get nice and browned. It turned out absolutely delicious and I will definitely be making it again. And a meal without meat is most definitely as satisfying as one with meat. I haven’t felt hungry at all and haven’t craved any other food this evening. I think I’ll be trying my hand at some vegan food again soon!

Louise

Xoxo