Pizza is one of the most common comfort foods, and something I really missed when adapting a healthier, pizza-less diet. Whilst making my popular quinoa bread recipe from my blog, I suddenly had a moment of enlightenment, and decided to bake it instead as a pizza crust. A few tweaks, and I had a delicious crispy base to build a pizza full of wonderful flavours, that may be veggie, but is still undeniably hearty. The sundried tomatoes add an incredible burst of flavour paired with their earthy mushrooms, spicy rocket, sweet beetroot and the show stopper cashew mozzerella.
The Ingredients
1 cup quinoa (soaked in 1 1/2 cups water overnight or for 7 hours)
2 tablespoon mixed herbs
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 cup cashews (soaked overnight)
1/4 cup tomato paste
a handful of mushrooms
1/4 cup sundried tomatoes
1 cooked beetroot or 1 cup of cooked squash
Rocket + Toasted pine nuts to garnish
Juice 1/2 lemon
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast (if you don’t have this use 1/4 a stock cube)
Method
To prepare for this recipe soak the quinoa and cashews overnight or for a few hours as adviced above.
Preheat the oven to 190c.
Drain any of the water left from the soaked quinoa and add to a food processor with the lemon juice, mixed herbs and chilli flakes. Process until smooth. Drizzle some olive oil on a cake tin (with a removable base) and spread in the pizza dough, making sure it’s evenly spread. Cook for around 25 minutes.
Make the cashew ‘mozzarella’ by adding the cashews to a food processor with the lemon juice, nutritional yeast and lemon. Season to taste and process until smooth.
Remove from the oven and spread with the tomato paste, add the sliced mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, dollops of cashew ‘mozerella’, beetroot and pine nuts. Put in the oven for a further 10-15 minutes. Whilst the final bit cooks, toss your rocket in a little lemon juice, olive, salt and pepper. When the pizza is done remove it from the cake tin, and top with lots of lovely rocket!
