Satay sriracha vegan pizza

Homemade pizza remains on our weekly meal plan and most of the time I use a standard mix of toppings: tomato paste, oregano, nutritional yeast, spinach, peppers, tomatoes and pineapple. If we have mushrooms I add some of those too.

Last week, I mixed things up a bit and swapped the tomato paste for peanut butter and the oregano for coriander. Sriracha provided a bonus topping. Using the term 'satay' is a bit generous but I thought 'peanut butter sriracha' might put people off as a title! That would have been a shame, because this flavour mix was delicious and a nice change from a tomato base.

I honoured my usual toppings with spinach, pepper, tomatoes and pineapple. As we had portobello mushrooms I grilled a couple separately and served them as a side to the pizza. However, you could mix up the vegetables to suit what you have to hand. I do recommend the pineapple though!

If you aren't a fan of too much spice you could use sweet chilli sauce instead of sriracha here - or any chilli sauce of choice if sriracha isn't to hand.

Satay sriracha pizza

A vegan pizza with a kick

Makes 4 small pizzas

Allow approximately 45-60 minutes of advance preparation time to make the dough

Author: Bite-sized thoughts

Ingredients

For the base (makes 4 small individual pizzas) -

1-1/2 tsp instant yeast

1/2 tsp sugar

1/4 cup (63ml) + 1/4 cup (63ml) warm water, divided

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cups plain flour

Pinch salt

To top -

Peanut butter, approximately 1 tbsp per pizza (I use 100% peanut versions)

Nutritional yeast, approximately 1 tsp per pizza

Fresh coriander, chopped, approximately 2 tbsp chopped per pizza

Baby spinach leaves, approximately 1/2 cup per pizza

Red or yellow bell pepper, sliced, approximately 1/4 pepper per pizza

Cherry tomatoes, sliced, approximately 4 tomatoes per pizza

Tinned pineapple pieces, approximately 8 pieces per pizza

Sriracha, to taste

Method

For the base -

Combine the yeast, sugar and 1/4 cup warm water in a cup or small jug and set aside for 15 or so minutes. The mix will froth up.

After 15 minutes or so, add the oil to the yeast mixture. Place the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and pour the yeast mix over the top, along with the additional 1/4 cup warm water. Stir with a wooden spoon and then knead the mix together using your hands. Add a tablespoon or so more of water if needed, to achieve a thick dough-like consistency. 

Cover the dough, in your mixing bowl, with a tea towel and set somewhere warm to rise for approximately 45 minutes.

When ready, heat your oven to 160'C and prepare baking trays (you made need to cook your pizzas in batches of two, depending on the size of your oven).

Knead the risen dough for a minute or so. Divide into four balls and roll each one out on non-stick paper to 1-2cm thickness. 

To top -

Spread each pizza base with peanut butter and a drizzle of sriracha. Sprinkle over the nutritional yeast and coriander. Add the spinach leaves, then the pepper, tomato and pineapple. Drizzle over more srirarcha as desired..

Bake for approximately 12 minutes, or until the base is golden and firm.

What are your favourite pizza toppings?

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Vegan pizza pinwheels

If you have children or use Pinterest, you are probably familiar with the internet phenomenon that is pinwheels. These are rolled up swirls of puff pastry that can be filled with savoury or sweet ingredients. They are renowned for being easy to make, easy for children to eat and delicious.

I finally jumped on board the pinwheel trend last weekend. Indeed, they are easy to make, easy to eat (for children and adults alike) and delicious. I don't tend to cook with puff pastry regularly and so I'm not likely to make these on a frequent basis, but they will be going into rotation in my kitchen. My pinwheels were pretty messy and I'm sure you could make neater ones, but even with my sub-par pastry skills they held together and cooked with no problem.

 

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Smoky barbecue calzone with aubergine and peppers

Many thanks for your lovely comments on my last post. It's safe to say that parenthood is a whole new world, with many ups and downs, and that I have a new appreciation for the effects of persistent sleep deprivation. However, Mini Bite is delightful and I am learning to ride out the challenging moments and savour the cute, lovely, satisfying ones.

This post shares a recipe from before we had a newborn. I am definitely not rolling out dough or finely chopping vegetables at the moment! However, I hope I can re-create this one day because it was a meal we both enjoyed and I absolutely loved the smoky vegetable filling.

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Vegan pizza with tahini, mint, sriracha and kale

I've mentioned previously that we regularly make pizza for dinner. However, I've never actually shared a full savoury pizza recipe (I have shared a dessert one). There are two main reasons for this. One is that I use a base recipe only loosely adapted from Kate's on No Meat and Three Veg, and it didn't seem necessary or appropriate to re-post it. The other is that I generally use the same toppings, and they aren't that exciting: tomato paste, dried oregano, spinach or kale leaves, pepper, tomatoes and pineapple. Sometimes I use hummus instead of tomato paste, and sometimes I add nutritional yeast. So far, so standard.

This pizza was a bit more adventurous and so I am taking the opportunity to share the recipe with you. To be honest, even as I made it I wasn't confident that it would work out. I was sure about the tahini, and even the sriracha, but mint on a pizza? It wasn't something I'd come across and I was prepared to regret my whim to use it. Fortunately, the combination was delicious and I can now attest that mint on pizza is excellent! I will definitely be adding these toppings to my pizza rotation.

I tend to make pizza base in a quantity that gives 4 individual pizzas. Mr Bite and I each have one for dinner, and then another slightly smaller one for lunch the next day. We have his and hers toppings (albeit with lots of overlap) and I am sure many households would do the same. Thus, I list the pizza base ingredients to make a quantity of 4 bases, but then give the toppings for this particular recipe with a guide to what you need per pizza. Whilst the tahini, mint and srirarcha components are essential for this version, feel free to vary the vegetable toppings to suit what you have to hand.

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Fruity chocolate marshmallow dessert pizza

I have long been fascinated by dessert pizza. As a child, it seemed like a brilliant idea - why not take pizza and improve it with chocolate and marshmallows and other sweet things? And yet, somehow, I never actually tried it. In childhood, external factors no doubt played a role in this. In adulthood, I think I always went for other desserts. More recently, foods with gelatin-containing marshmallows have been off the menu (and most dessert pizzas seem to include marshmallows).

Now that I can buy vegan marshmallows, it seemed the perfect time to indulge my childhood fantasy and make a dessert pizza at home. The pictures in this post do not do it justice - please accept my apologies for the lighting - but the pizza was every bit as gooey and sweet and satisfying as I had imagined. For my Australian readers who don't have access to vegan mallows, some dairy free white chocolate would be a possible alternative for the topping.

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Vegan pizza from Pizza Express and Zizzi

Vegan pizza. It has never been a big deal to me, because my general dislike of cheese means I am quite happy to have my pizzas cheese free. However, I know it is a big deal to some. If you like cheese, pizza may be one of the best ways to eat it. Plus, pizza is a social food. Avoiding it because you're vegan is not fun. Being seen as odd by restaurant staff who have never thought to leave cheese off a pizza - and there have been times when someone has come out to check not once, not twice, but three times if I really wanted my cheese left off - is also not fun.

The view from London's Canary Wharf Zizzi restaurant

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Perth pizza: Hero's Pizza North Perth and Crust Gourmet Pizza Subiaco

When Mr Bite and I were dating but not living together, we settled into a routine around when we saw each other and what sorts of things we did.

(Yes, even back then we were like an old married couple.)

In a standard week, we saw each other on Tuesday night, Friday night, and Saturday day and night through to Sunday morning, at which point we parted ways until Tuesday rolled around again.

Because I lived by myself and Mr B did not, we generally met at my place. This meant we were eating dinner at my (now our) house up to three nights per week. So that I didn't have to cook on each of those nights, we established a routine quite early on that saw us eat out or order take-away at least one night per week.

Hero's Pizza - The Vegetator

Favourites were Thai, Japanese, fish, and one particular pizza place not far from us, Hero's Pizza. Hero's Pizza markets themselves as making "fresher, healthier, tastier pizza" and we tended to agree with their claims. They also go easy on the cheese, which makes me happy.

When we moved in together, we gradually moved away from restaurant and take-away food and these days we mostly eat at home. Generally I don't mind that, and even prefer it, although Thai a bit more often would be nice too!

Hero's Pizza was retained as a take-away treat around Mr Bite's birthday, but then the store nearest to us closed down. In one of those amusing twists of fate, the store shut because the lease expired and wasn't renewed. The new tenants? A Curves fitness centre. I still smile when I drive past.

In the lead up to Mr Bite's birthday this year, we thought we would try an alternative local pizza place, Crust Gourmet Pizza, in case they could fill Hero's shoes. I can tell you the exact date we visited - the 18th March 2012 - because Johanna helpfully reviewed Crust Pizza on Green Gourmet Giraffe the very day we had planned to go. Her review showed the pesto aioli that comes drizzled on top of the Vegetarian Supreme pizza, allowing us to know to steer clear of that.

Crust has several stores in Perth, two of which are relatively close to us. There are six vegetarian pizzas to choose from, plus a vegetarian calzone, which is quite an impressive range. It's also possible to design your own pizza, a concept that appeals to me greatly. When we visited, though, we decided to order off the menu for our first try. Usually when we order pizza for just the two of us, we get one large to share and I pair my pieces with salad, so customised pizzas would have required half-and-half ordering and it started to get messy.

Our choice? The Vegetarian Supreme minus the pesto aioli!

Crust Gourmet Pizza - Vegetarian Supreme

This comes with eggplant, artichokes, baby spinach, capsicum, mushrooms and sundried tomatoes on a tomato base. In standard form it also includes the pesto aioli and two types of cheese, which seems rather excessive. We asked for no aioli and no bocconcini, which left mozzarella for Mr Bite to eat and me to pick off.

Unfortunately, I think we would have been better ordering our own pizzas and/or customising things to our own tastes, even if it meant purchasing two pizzas instead of one. We both found this version a bit lacking, and wondered if the seasonings and flavours had been in the pesto aioli that we omitted - certainly without it, there wasn't a lot of flavour and we weren't able to identify any herbs in taste or appearance. It was also too cheesey for both of us, and by the time I tried to remove most of the cheese from my pieces I had removed most of the vegetables too.

In the end, not a resounding success. I would like to try Crust again with either a customised (and cheese-free!) pizza or with their 'Healthier Choice' baby spinach pizza minus cheese, but for now we are giving them a bit of a break.

For Mr Bite's birthday, we weren't taking any risks and drove the extra distance to another Hero's Pizza store in Perth. We ordered three vegetarian varieties, as we had Mr Bite's family over to help us eat them:

• The Vegetator (tomato base, onions mushrooms, tomatoes, olives, capsicum, basil, mozzarella)
• The Snow Meat (tomato base, roast pumpkin, artichoke, eggplant, capsicum, cream cheese, sesame seeds, basil)
• The Avegers (avocado base, semi-dried tomatoes, roast pumpkin, mushroom, feta cheese, mozzarella, pepper)

The Vegetator is my favourite and I have also tried The Snow Meat before. The Avegers was a new variety that proved to be a hit with Mr B and his family, but I didn't try it as my odd tastes mean that I don't like avocado outside of desserts. 

The thing about all of the flavour varieties (in addition to their names being a little on the creative side!) is that they taste fresh. So many take-away pizzas taste oily or bland, but here there are plenty of vegetables and plenty of seasonings.

The Vegetator

The Snow Meat

The Avegers

There's also not too much cheese.

For now, I think we'll be sticking with Hero's Pizza on the rare occasions we venture into take-away. Crust deserves another try, but it may take a little while for the opportunity to arise.

We visited Crust Gourmet Pizza in Subiaco and Hero's Pizza in North Perth. Crust has stores Australia-wide whilst Hero's is Western Australia specific at this stage.


How often do you order take-away? And do you have a reliable pizza option?

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Easy weeknight entertaining

As part of my efforts to stay up-to-date with professional development type matters, I'm part of a group of six who meet every two months, ostensibly to discuss work-related issues. We do discuss work-related issues, but it's also a way of keeping in touch with friends from university who may otherwise be seen infrequently.

Foolishly, I offered to host our meeting last week, a few days after we returned from Tasmania. As someone who likes to clean the house, arrange food to look attractive, and make 'impressive' looking dishes when people come over, this was not entirely wise.

So what did I do?

I cut corners :P

Fruit and nut bread, olive bread, carrot and celery, hummus, and crackers to start.

Four vegetarian pizza options and roasted capsicum for main.

Strawberries, date and almond balls, chocolate almond balls, and Hannah's chocolate coconut hazlenut fudge for dessert.

Super simple!

The pizzas included two with fetta (which could be easily removed from my pieces) and two with mozzarella:

Sweet chilli, spinach and pumpkin pizza with fetta

1 pizza base of choice

Sweet chilli sauce, spread over base with a pastry brush

Baby spinach leaves, layered over the sauce

Steamed pumpkin, diced

Fetta, diced

~2 tbsp fresh coriander, torn and sprinkled over the top

Mediterranean pizza with fetta or mozzarella (I made one of each)

1 pizza base of choice

Tomato paste

1/2 zucchini, sliced thinly

1 capsicum, sliced thinly

4 mushrooms, peeled and sliced

Sun dried tomatoes, to taste

Dried or fresh basil / oregano / herbs of choice, sprinkled over the top

Fetta or mozzarella

Tomato and herb pizza with mozzarella

1 pizza base of choice

Tomato paste

Up to one punnet of cherry tomatoes, quartered (use a sharp knife, so they don't smush!)

Dried or fresh basil / oregano / herbs of choice

Mozzarella

The nice thing about pizza is that you can't really go wrong, and there are so many flavour variations - even without moving into meat options. The pumpkin option was my favourite this time.

The chocolate almond balls were an impromptu variation on the other balls / nut fudge products I'd made before. Happily, they worked a lot better than the chocolate date variety I made back at Easter and my non-vegan, non-raw food friends happily ate quite a few.

Chocolate almond balls

100g raw almonds

60g oats

60g dark chocolate chips (or dark chocolate, chopped)

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp almond essence

1 tbsp pure maple syrup

Pinch salt

1. Process almonds in a food processor until fine; add oats and process until combined and fine.
2. Add chocolate chops, vanilla essence, almond essence, maple syrup and salt and process until just combined and starting to form a sticky ball
3. Roll into teaspoon-ish size balls and set in the fridge or freezer (they keep slightly soft in the freezer but are firm enough in the fridge)

Do you have stand by recipes or systems for entertaining?

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