Vegan Mexican Pizza

Oh gosh it's been a while since I've posted hasn't it...really sorry! >.<

On a good note, this blog has been the motivation that I intended it to be; to the point that I find myself looking at a recipe and thinking "ohh, this will be awesome to make for my blog." Only thing is, once I cook and enjoy my meal, I don't have the energy to post a blog about it >.< I will revisit those recipes though. Don't worry~

But for today, I have a yummy post that is so easy to make and so easy to customize: pizza!

The main difference between this Mexican pizza and regular pizza seems to be the dough, not needing any time to rise at all.

College-level simplicity. Loving it.

The only thing wasn't easy was having to get the veggies. You know, those things that college students never buy because they seem to go bad so quickly? Yea.

Anywho, my friend Mairead and I were going to go to a local vegan cafe to get pizza but their wait time was ridiculous (I called at 3 to pre order a pizza and they were backed up until 8!) so, we decided to make our own! She pulled out this book called The Vegetarian Gourmet's Easy International Recipes by Bobbie Hinman and flipped to page 76 to find "South-of-the-Border Pizza." Now, this politically incorrectly named pizza was completely vegan except for the cheese part...so I bought some almond cheese. I have to say, the worst part about this pizza was the cheese I used. Next time, I'm going with Daiya Cheese. More expensive, but considering how much I paid for the almond cheese, might as well splurge a little more on actual deliciousness. Also, Mairea

Note: the recipe I'm posting will only make one pizza...though I guess you could make multiple small pizzas if you really wanted to.d opted to use real cheese (since she can actually eat it) so that's why we made two pizzas.

Now this recipe may seem complicated, but it's really not. Just a bit ingredient heavy. Also, I left out the tsp of ground cumin and replaced the tsp of dried oregano with Italian seasoning because I'm a college student with a limited collection of spices. Also, when it came to the toppings, we really just threw a whole bunch of toppings on it...no measurements. Just threw stuff on there.

Mexican Pizza - Yields about 3-4 servings

Ingredients:

Crust:

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp water (so particular...)

Sauce:

1 8 oz can of tomato sauce

1/3 cup salsa (spiciness is up to you. I used medium)

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp Italian seasoning (or dried oregano)

1/8 tsp garlic powder

Toppings:

1.5 cups of shredded soy cheese of your choice (mozzarella and/or cheddar works)

half a minced onion

half a very thinly sliced green pepper (my slices were too thick and they weren't soft enough when the pizza was done)

2-3 sliced mushrooms

some freshly chopped spinach

whatever else you want because it's a pizza. just make sure it's thin enough to cook well. if you add meat, like ground turkey, cook it before adding it to pizza.

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Lightly oil a 12" pizza pan (or use a cookie sheet).

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine both types of flour, baking powder, and salt and mix well. Add water and mix until all ingredients are moistened. Using your hands, work the dough into a ball. If it's too sticky, flour your hands a bit. Place dough in prepared pan and press to form a crust.

3. Bake the crust for 10 minutes. For the meantime, work on preparing the sauce and toppings. (don't forget to set a timer)

4. Combine all the sauce ingredients in a bowl, mixing well. Prepare toppings as listed.

5. Once the crust is done baking and out of the oven, spread sauce evenly, staying 1/2 in away from the edge of the crust. Sprinkle the cheese and the toppings heavily over the sauce. If it looks like a ridiculous salad right now, remember that most of the ingredients will shrink while cooking.

6. Bake the topped pizza 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted (since the ingredients are okay raw anyway).

Enjoy! The crust turned out to be quite crunchy in some spots...mmm ^-^

Vegan Curried Lentil Soup

Okay. So lentil soup isn't really something that needs to be changed for my dietary restrictions. However, being a college student, I did have to change/omit a few things from the recipe due to a lack of...resources, to say the least :]

So my friend Rena (who is staying with me at college for a week or two) and I were just dillydallying around when we realized that though it was 11 PM, we hadn't had dinner yet. (aka. preoccupied with bananagrams :x) I had planned to make some breaded tilapia with a dijon mustard and mayo sauce but then realized I didn't have enough fillets to fill the both of us. Looking to add something more filling, I reached into my college cupboard filled with non-perishables, pulled out a bag of green lentils, and immediately though of soup. We pondered if curry would go with lentils and ended up Googling this Curried Lentil Soup recipe.

Because it's currently a winter wonderland outside and neither of us have a car, we had to make due with the ingredients we had in the house. So a medium carrot became a bunch of chopped baby carrots, garlic cloves were replaced with a LOT of garlic powder (though it probably would've tasted amazing with real garlic), and a medium onion translated into 3 small cooking onions. The green onions and wedged lemons were omitted due to a lack of resources and the sheer lack of desire to garnish our dishes. And even though the recipe is scaled to yield 6 servings, that just means leftovers for tomorrow! Also, no food processor? No problem. Bring a friend and a potato masher.

(Thanks Rena. Those chickpeas didn't see what hit em :P )

Curried Lentil Soup - Yields about 6 servings

Ingredients:

3 tbsp olive oil, divided
3 small cooking onions, chopped
2 handfuls of baby carrots (or 1 medium carrot), finely chopped
1 tbsp of garlic powder (or 1 clove of garlic, chopped)
2 1/2 tbsp of curry powder
1 cup of green lentils

5 cups of water, divided
1 15.5 can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained, rinsed
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp of margarine or replace with olive oil
some salt and pepper to taste

Directions
1. In a large pot over medium heat, heat 1 tbsp of olive oil. Add onions and carrots. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook until onion is translucent, stirring occasionally for about 4 minutes. If you have garlic instead of garlic powder, add it in now. If not, keep heating until the carrots are starting to soften.
2. Add 2 1/2 tbsp of curry powder and stir for about a minute, until it is evenly dispersed.
3. Add lentils and 4 cups of water. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Increase heat until boiling, then reduce heat to medium to simmer until lentils are tender (about 30 minutes).
4. As the lentils are simmering, mash the chickpeas, lemon juice, 1/4 cup of water, 2 tbsp of olive oil, margarine (or extra olive oil), and garlic powder (if you didn't use garlic cloves) until most of the chickpeas have basically turned into hummus...although I personally don't mind having chickpea chunks in my soup.
5. Add your chickpea puree to the simmering soup and stir until puree is evenly distributed. Season to taste with salt and curry powder. Add water to change consistency if needed.

So yummy...and now I have leftovers! Yay! Went pretty well with the tilapia :]

Almond Cookies and Vanilla Pudding

So, I meant to do this entry a week ago, but my mother insisted that I wait until this weekend so that she could learn how to bake (she's a typical Asian mother...really no reason to use the oven other than to store pans and such...). Of course, once I started, she didn't care to watch as her favorite TV show was on. Figures.

Anywho, so she had requested that I make an almond based cookie, as those are her favorite, without it being too sweet. As I later decided, vanilla pudding would go really well with these cookies to make up for the lack of sweetness (dipping the cookies worked especially well) and it helped with taking care of the yolks leftover from the cookie recipe (which called for egg whites). As you'll come to learn, I really hate wasting food and resources in general...

So, I Googled almond cookies and dug up this Hazelnut and Almond Cookie recipe. I altered the recipe in several ways. First off, since I'm at home where my mother only has one cookie sheet, I changed the serving to 15 cookies. Then, since I didn't have hazelnuts, I just replaced the hazelnuts with, you guessed it, more almonds. Even though the recipe called for chopped almonds, I just smashed them around in my mortar and pestle set until they became somewhat grainy, not to the point of powder. I also added one extra egg white as I was using medium eggs and it didn't look like enough. Also I kind of changed my methods. So the recipe became:

Almond Cookies - Yields about 15 servings

Ingredients:

3 medium egg whites (separated using the hand to hand method...saved yolks for pudding)

1/4 cup and 3 tbsp of white sugar

~1 cup of crushed/chopped/smashed almonds

1 tsp of vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 F and coat cookie sheet with grease, oil, or margarine.

2. In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Add sugar and beat until mixture is thick and white. Stir in vanilla extract and then almonds.
3. Pour mixture into a saucepan over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon for about 10 minutes, or until it becomes thicker and more beige. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet about 1 inch apart.

4. Bake about 16-19 minutes, until cookies are dry to the touch. Cool on a wire rack.

While the cookies were in the oven, I decided to start working on the pudding. Mind you, set a timer for the cookies, because I got distracted and left the cookies in a minute too long (still turned out well as indicated by my parents eating about half of them in 5 minutes, lol).

I found this Old-Fashioned Vanilla Pudding recipe online as well, and altered it to make it nonlethal to us lactose intolerant folks out there. Also changed the serving size as I had three yolks to use up:

Vanilla Pudding - Yields 6 servings.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup and 2 tbsp of white sugar

3 tbsp of cornstarch

1/4 tsp of salt

3 cups of Vanilla almond milk

3 egg yolks, lightly beaten in a heat safe bowl

1 tbsp and 1 tsp of margarine or butter

1.5 tsp of vanilla extract

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt. Gradually stir in the almond milk until solids are evenly dispersed. Stir over medium heat until thickened and bubbly. Reduce heat and stir for 2 more minutes. Remove from heat.

2. Stir a small amount of hot filling into egg yolk then return all to pan. Return to heat and bring to a boil while stirring, making sure to scrape bottom (reason why I use a wooden spoon!)

3. Leaving pan on stove, turn off heat and stir for another minute or two. Then remove from heat and gently stir in the butter and vanilla.

4. Cool for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Transfer to dessert dishes, cover, and refrigerate for 1 hour.

I think this first endeavor of the year was a success...seeing as how my mother was scraping the saucepan clean of pudding with a cookie when she she asked me when I could make more -__-