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We gotta eat!

Cheese-less Pizza - Why Not?

10/15/2016

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When I was growing up our house could get a bit hectic at times.  Especially during the school year when between the five of us kids we were often attending at least three different schools and all playing and doing various extra curricular activities.  How my parents managed I'll never know but I have so many great memories to cherish from the busyness and chaos that presumed.  

I remember Sunday nights were always our formal family dinner nights, but Thursdays were usually pizza night.  The night we would all gather as a family and eat dinner in front of the tv watching shows like The Cosby Show and A Different World.  It meant eating together but sitting on floors or squeezed in the coach or at the puzzle table.  It may not be a proud memory for my family that I should be admitting to on the internet but it still brought us together.  We'd work on homework, talk during commercials or about the shows, we'd sit on each other if our seats got stolen.  For busy hectic weeks it was a good break to formalities, a chance to relax.  

Pizza, while not quite my favorite food, is a food I could never and will never turn down.  I love pizza.  So going gluten free seemed hard, will I ever find a good gluten free crust? Maybe I haven't tried the best yet but I have managed to find many I could eat every day.  Trying to go vegan I found myself questing if I could like pizza without cheese.  Heck yeah! With veggies piled high on it you don't even think about missing cheese.

So here is a recipe we have found to be a quick dinner fix on a busy night that packs in a solid gluten free meal.
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This recipe does require a bit of pre-planning or prep since it uses Allyson Kramer's cashew cream sauce.  I have found her cashew cream sauce to be so versatile that I use it throughout the week in lots of different forms. I have gotten in the habit of making a batch on Sunday and just taking a little out each night for what ever I make for dinner.  The sauce itself isn't hard or time consuming to make since you just dump the ingredients in the blender, however, the cashews have to soak for at least six hours (easy to do overnight).  

So with the exception of the cashew cream sauce (which we can assume is pre-made in your fridge), the first step you'll want to take is the garlic oil.  This way the garlic can infuse while you are doing other meal prep.  We love garlic in our house so we go heavy on it, you may want to use less cloves depending on your flavor preference.

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So like I said, we will use several large cloves for any given recipe.  This photo may not look much like garlic in oil, but it is.  I was at my best friend's house once when she was making us dinner and she pulled out a special plate to grate her garlic on.  I was in awe.  I had never seen anything like it but knew then that I NEEDED it.  Luckily, my birthday was coming up and she said she would buy it for me.  So it wasn't long before I had my own, and I have used many times since.

While the garlic is infusing, you can start chopping your veggies.  This night we used what we had on hand which was: mushrooms, red onions, asparagus, zucchini, kale, and spinach.  

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The sauce.  You could use red sauce.  However, for a little more nutrition we opted for the cashew cream based sauce.  We took 1/2 cup of the cashew cream and loaded in the spices and nutritional yeast flakes (available at most grocery stores).  Mixed it up and it was that easy. 

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Trader Joe's recently released a new gluten free pizza crust and we almost missed it but in talking to a sales associate we were steered towards it.  We love Trader Joe's gluten free bakery items and frozen waffles so we were optimistic on the pizza crusts.  A good comparable item is Udi's frozen pizza crusts.  However, we have found we like those in lieu of garlic bread-cooking lightly with just our garlic oil brushed all over.  Udi's crust is less optimal for a loaded pizza.

Trader Joe's pizza crust says to bake straight on the oven rack, however, we still prefer to bake on a pizza pan (still saving money for a pizza stone).  This is also helpful if you add as much veggies as we do as it can be quite heavy on the thin crust.  
So by now, you should be pre-cooking your veggies since they won't be in the oven long enough.  And preheating your oven, ours takes forever.  So that it becomes very easy to assemble your pizza. Start by brushing the crust of your pizza with the garlic oil.  Load it on pretty well.  Then add your left over garlic oil to your cashew sauce and stir well to combine.  Spread that sauce on your pizza.  You may have some sauce left over and not need it all.  At this point I like to sprinkle more basil (fresh or dried) on top of the sauce.  Once your veggies are tender and to your liking, pile and spread on top of your sauce.  Then bake in the oven for about 15 minutes.  Slice and enjoy.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of Allyson Kramer's cashew cream sauce
Italian spices to taste - I start with 1/2 to 1 tsp of each - Oregano, basil, pepper, red pepper, Italian spice mix, garlic powder, etc.
1 tsp of nutritional yeast flakes (can use more if desired-this helps give it a more cheese flavor)
olive oil - 1-1 1/2 tbs
fresh garlic - as many cloves as you like
1 frozen pizza crust
approximately 2 cups of mixed veggies cooked until tender
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