Socca Pizza

I made a new thing!

I've been hearing a lot about socca recently, a flatbread made with chickpea flour, and only last night did it occur to me that it's probably hot right now because it's gluten free. Well, who cares, because it's terrific and really easy. The only ingredients are chickpea flour, water, salt, and olive oil.  A LOT of olive oil - 1/3 cup. I used the recipe in Bean by Bean and she warns you not to cut the amount of oil, but seriously. I think I'm going to try 1/4th cup next time.

Anyway, so you mix up the batter and pour it into a hot, oiled cast iron skillet and then bake it. You can eat it plain, but you can also turn it into pizza, which is what I did. After 20 minutes in the oven, I took it out and topped it with chopped dried figs, blue cheese, and caramelized onions.

It was awesome, and even easier than regular pizza!  This is definitely a new item for the regular rotation.

Evening o' Gluttony

On Saturday night Ben and I went to Lilly's Pizza.  They have a pizza with rosemary roasted potatoes and garlic that I've been craving like crazy lately.  Ben is against pizza with potatoes on it, so he got a pesto and  cheese one with pistachios instead.  I took a picture of it but it has disappeared from my phone!  So you'll have to use your imagination.  He reported that it was great.

Here's mine with the potatoes and roasted onions and red peppers.  It was perfection.

So then we went around the corner to Hayes Barton Cafe, which has completely insane desserts.  They are $8 each, which seemed crazy to me the first time we went, but then I realized that each portion would easily feed three people.  They are enormous.  Way too big to eat in one sitting (unless you are Ben).  We always get ours to go.

Look at those cakes!

Ben got a piece of key lime pie that is 1/8th of a three-inch-tall pie and ate the entire thing in one sitting.  Then he whined around the rest of the night that he felt like he was going to die.

I got this peanut butter and chocolate thing which turned out to not be regular cake - the chocolate part is a layer of brownies - thick, dense, chewy brownies.  I couldn't even eat half this thing at once.

(Ben's hand for scale.)

The Lilly's/Hayes Barton thing is fun but must be limited to about once a year.  I'm still recovering.  Maybe because I ate the rest of that peanut butter brownie last night.

Pizzzzzaaaaa

OK, I've made and posted this exact pizza before. But it's been a while, because at some point in my head I decided vegan pizza wasn't really worth the hassle and quit making it. Uh. Why did I do that? This pizza is super great.

Ben makes the dough from a recipe provided by my friend Kate, who I think is the only person I know who loves food as much as I do. It is terrific every time, and as an extra bonus Ben decided at some point he was the master doughmaker, so I always let him do it. I'm not going to argue if it makes my life easier!

My toppings are pesto and tofu ricotta, both whipped up in the food processor while Ben mixed up the dough, with some shiitake mushrooms and Trader Joe's jarred pizza sauce. Perfection!

Roasted 40-Clove Garlic Chickpeas & Broccoli

This doesn't actually have 40 cloves of garlic in it, but it does have ten, which is a lot. I made this once before, early in the blog, and this time made some israeli couscous (Trader Joe's Harvest Mix, specifically) to go with. It was a nice wholesome dinner after today's lunch of pizza.

And here's the pizza. We went to the Mellow Mushroom, where they have vegan cheese, but either our waitress or someone in the kitchen was not that bright because when I specified vegan cheese on the Mega Veggie pizza, they replaced the mozzarella but still included the feta. Drat! If it hadn't taken forty freaking minutes to get our food I might have sent it back, but I just shut up and ate it. SIGH. Poor little cow.

It was pretty good, though. I can't lie.

ZPizza

ZPizza is one of the only chains that carries vegan cheese - and fortunately, there is one within delivery distance of our house. Last night we got home late from a Future Problem Solving Board Meeting in Boone, so we went with pizza for dinner.

I got shiitake mushrooms, roasted red peppers, and zucchini. It was delicious!

Pizza and Cookies!

I went to the store after work to get sesame oil and came home with all the ingredients for pizza. I don't know what happened!

I made pesto for the base, some tofu ricotta to spread on top of that, and then added some Lightlife Veggie Pepperoni and shiitake mushrooms. I also made the dough for the first time ever! Ben usually does it but he wasn't home yet and I thought I could probably figure it out. MMM, PIZZA.

Then I decided to try another batch of ice cream, since my attempt over the weekend failed. And, naturally, since I was making ice cream, I might as well make some cookies. This chocolate chip recipe is from Vegan Diner, and is the best of the (er, three) vegan chocolate chip cookie recipes I've tried in the past few months. They were perfect!

The ice cream worked, too, which was a relief. I kind of made the recipe up and it is VERY sweet, but I don't really care because a) we like sugar and b) my main goal was just to make sure the machine could actually make ice cream. I've had it since we got married but I think I'd only used it maybe twice. I plan to put it to good use now, though, because good non-dairy ice cream is really expensive.

Oh, and I made this thing on Wednesday and it was good.

It's a chilean-style shepherd's pie type thing, except with corn pudding on the top rather than mashed potatoes. I didn't post it because I forgot to take a picture showing the insides (potatoes, carrots, peas, tempeh), so I only have the crusty baked top here. It was a nice hearty dinner, though, something I will make again for sure.

Return to Vegetables: Pizza!

I stopped on the way home from work and got a bunch of stuff for pizza.

Delicious ingredients! I made pesto and tofu basil ricotta and Ben, as always made the crust.

Pesto Pizza

Ben found out about rennet recently, and how it is in basically all fancy blue cheeses, and is having a dramatic inner conflict about whether or not he can live a life without blue cheese. I decided to try to help him out by proving that pizza can be delicious without it.

He made the crust, I made some basil-tofu ricotta and some pesto, and we put it all together with some store-bought pizza sauce and shiitake mushrooms.

He claims is isn't as good as his weird concoction, but grudgingly admitted it was still pretty tasty. I thought it was great! Easily the best vegan pizza I've had so far.

Banana approved.

Pizza!

We eat a lot of pizza. I do 95% of the cooking in our house, but the pizza is all Ben. He's a huge snob and insists on making the crust himself from scratch. He takes care of the whole process, really, except for the toppings on my half.

I eat normal pizza. Tonight mine had the standard tomato sauce, field roast italian sausage, broccoli, shallots, and daiya vegan cheese. Ben, on the other hand, always makes a paste of the following: crumbled blue cheese, ground nuts of some kind, barbeque sauce, honey, and cayenne. Tonight he added dried cherries for some reason. This entire concept totally disgusting to me, hence the big line down the center of the pizza where our toppings don't touch.