Comments (17)

By kilax, December 26, 2009 6:13 am

We LOVE making homemade pizza! It’s so fun to pick your own toppings, and it’s especially fun to make pizzas with a group of people and see what everyone puts on theirs!

But for the longest time, we were using store-bought crusts (we are still using store-bought sauce – that’s the next step!). They’re okay, but nothing special. When my coworker told me she had a great vegan pizza crust recipe, I made her send  it to me ASAP! We tried it, and oh boy, it does NOT disappoint!

The ingredients are:

• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 cup warm water (110F-115F)
• 1/4 oz (1 envelope) active dry yeast
• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 c margarine or oil
  

Step 1: Dissolve the sugar in the warm water. Sprinkle the yeast on top and stir (if the mixture stays clear, and the yeast clumps together, the water is not warm enough – throw it out and start over). Let the mixture stand in a warm spot for 5 minutes until a thin layer of creamy foam covers the surface.

Step 2: Mix 3 cups for flour with the salt in a large bowl. Make a hole in the middle of the mixture and pour in the yeast mixture and the margarine or oil. Stir the flour into the well with a wooden spoon until it is mixed in and the dough holds together.

Step 3: Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead in the remaining flour. Continue to knead, adding more flour if necessary, until the dough is smooth and elastic (10-15 minutes). Form a ball with the dough and place it in an oiled bowl. Cover with a clean towel and place the bowl in a warm area to let the dough rise (45 minutes for quick yeast, 60-90 minutes for regular yeast).

Step 4: Pre-heat the oven to 500F and get your toppings ready (we use a pizza stone, so we preheat the stone with the oven because the actual bake time is so short). Once the dough has doubled in size, punch it down. Roll the ball out to form a pizza crust.

Step 6: Load up that bad boy with your toppings and slide it onto the stone – make sure to put LOTS of flour underneath the crust so it will slide. Bake for 10-15 minutes (or until the cheese starts to brown on the top for non-vegan pizza – usually more like 20 minutes).

Step 7: NOM it up! (Note: the pizza in the photo below looks messed up because we did not follow our own advice about the flour and it stuck to the sheet when we tried to move it to the stone! Oops! Live and learn!)

What are your favorite toppings to put on pizza?

I like zucchini, tomato, green pepper, lots of onion, spinach, and Morningstar crumbles. Steven likes all of that, plus olives and cheese. (Hmm, how did that olive end up on my slice in the top picture, Steven?)

We like to put garlic powder (not fresh garlic), cumin (yes mother – it can be used on pizza, it’s not just for chili), crushed red pepper, oregano and salt and pepper on for spices.

What I love about this crust is that it tastes like a crust you would eat in a restaurant! And you can make a big chewy crust on the end. Yum oh yum.

The only problem? It’s really hard to only eat one piece!

Comments (13)

By kilax, September 10, 2009 10:57 pm

Steven has finally perfected his pad siew recipe (the one I mentioned here) and is ready to share it!

Required Ingredients:

Required sauce ingredients (please note, that green top is NOT the top that comes on the sauce bottle – it is a wine topper someone gave us for our wedding).

Our preferred brands for baby corn and water chestnuts.

• 1 box lasagna pasta noodles (We use Barilla wavy lasagne. If you are adventurous, you can try the actual Thai noodles – good luck. That didn’t work too well for us – we don’t have a wok.)
• 1 large carrot
• 3  cups fresh broccoli florets (or a 16 oz bag of frozen florets) (The broccoli soaks up the sauce and tastes wonderful. Just be careful you don’t use too much or it will absorb all the sauce and make the dish bland.)
• 8 oz. sliced water chestnuts
  
• 15 oz. baby corn
• 1 cup spinach (just grab a handful – it’s good for you and can’t ruin the dish)
  
• 4 tbsp. vegetable oil (for stir frying)
  
• Tofu, OR 6 eggs, OR your preferred protein (We like Morningstar Steak Strips (which are now discontinued!), and Heartline Meatless Meats.)
• Vegetable oil for frying tofu (1/4″ – 1/2″ in a frying pan)

Sauce (double this if you are making marinated tofu):

• 2/3 cup sweet soy sauce (We have to go to a special part of Chicago to buy the kind we use. It’s thick and syrupy. This is really what makes the dish. If you can’t find this, you can use regular sauce and add lots of sugar, but it won’t be the same.)
• 1/3 cup Kimlan soy sauce (Any brand will work for this but Kimlan is our favorite – more flavor less salt.  Kikoman is also pretty good.)
  
• 1 tbsp. garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper (add to taste)
• 1 tbsp. white sugar

This was Steven’s first time cooking with tofu! Can you believe it? A vegetarian and vegan who have never cooked tofu?!

Well, because of this, we don’t know much about tofu and followed the instructions here. Like I mentioned in the ingredients list above though, you can use a lot of other things instead of tofu.

Extra firm tofu.

We bought the extra firm tofu (winky wink). You drain the liquid out of the tofu, put it on paper towels, and put a heavy pan filled with water on top of it to squish the water out of it. This process takes about 30 minutes, and you have to change the paper towels often, and watch the tofu to make sure it settles straight (to keep the pan from falling over).

Squishing the water out of the tofu.

After you have squished all of the water out of the tofu, you cut it into the size of chunks you want (we cut ours into roughly 1-inch x 1-inch cubes). Tofu doesn’t really taste like anything, so you can fry it like it is, or marinate it. The longer you marinate it, the more flavor it absorbs. For this recipe, you marinate it for about an hour in a bowl filled with the sauce recipe x2.

When you get the water boiling for the noodles, we usually put some soy sauce and crushed red pepper into the noodle water to add a bit of flavor to it (mostly just a nice aroma). It’s important that the noodles are cooked al dente, because they cook a bit longer later in the recipe.

While the pasta is boiling, you cut up all of the broccoli, chop the carrots, and open the cans of baby corn and water chestnuts. You should remove the tofu from the marinade at this point so you can use the remaining sauce (hopefully 1 cup or more!) for the main dish.

Once the pasta is ready (al dente!), you drain it, and rinse it briefly with cool water so you can handle it. You stack all of the noodles on top of one another (resist eating too many!), and cut them into three strips lengthwise, and down the middle (see below).

I always want to eat the noodles at this point.

Put 4 tablespoons of oil into the empty pasta pot, and stir fry the broccoli and carrots on high heat. The trick is to keep the veggies moving around.  After a few brief minutes (you just want to sear the outside of the veggies), add the spinach and stir it around until it has shriveled up.  Finally add the baby corn, water chestnuts, the sauce, and the noodles.

Stir it around to get the sauce on everything, then cover the pot with a lid.  Turn the heat down to low and cook for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, to soak up all the tasty sauce. This is a good time to make Trader Joe’s egg rolls or pot stickers (which are vegan!), and scramble some eggs or fry your tofu.

To fry the tofu, put about 1/4″ to 1/2″ of of oil in a pan on medium high. If the oil gets too hot, it will burn the tofu. The tofu cooks quickly, about 1 minute on each side. You need to drain the oil off of the tofu when it’s done, but paper towel seems to stick (perhaps a metal colander or frying mesh skimmer would work better).  If you are going the egg route, scramble the eggs  in a stick free skillet with a little vegetable oil (probably about 1 tablespoon), then add the scrambled eggs to the pot with the rest of the ingredients.

Marinated and fried tofu. Nom de nom.

We put the dish into bowls and added the tofu on top.

The finished product!

This is the kind of dish you want to make a lot of because it makes wonderful leftovers! As it sits in the fridge it just gets better and better. Perfect for taking a few bites of cold when you get home for work, or taking for lunch, then eating again for dinner (guilty of doing all three today!).

This dish takes about 1 hour to make from start to finish (not counting the tofu draining and marinating steps).

Let me know if you try it. Or if my instructions don’t make sense.