Hell Yes: Guacamole Naan Pizza

Oops! I did it again. I think I have a new favorite vegan pizza recipe.

Longtime readers will remember my first “new favorite vegan pizza recipe”: this delicious White Bean Pizza. Then less than a month ago, I blew that recipe out of the water with “my (new) new favorite vegan pizza recipe”: this even more delicious Roasted Pesto & Hummus Pizza. But now I’ve come up with something even more new and favorite: Guacamole Naan Pizza!

Surprisingly, I got the idea for this pie not from one of the many food blogs I follow, but from the travel blog Uncornered Market, run by two amazing world travelers whom I happened to cross paths with while I was in Berlin in July. They recently published a post detailing the amazing Berlin “Gastro Rally” they got to experience—a whirlwind tour of Berlin’s food scene, as well as its history and culture. It’s a fantastic post, and you should really check it out for yourself, but the important point for our purposes is that one of the dishes they were served was a guacamole naan pizza—a delightful fusion dish I had never even imagined, much less heard of, before. After seeing it, though, I knew I had to make it—and stat.

Mere days later, I did in fact make my own guacamole naan pizzas, for me and some friends. It was actually fairly easy, since I already had some experience with the pie’s different components. First, for the naan, I used the naan recipe I always use, because it’s the best naan recipe there is: this one from Manjula’s Kitchen (vegans: you’ll need to sub in soy yogurt for the regular stuff). This naan always comes out so good, and thankfully it still worked out rolled out into bigger pizza crust rounds. Here’s a couple of my naan breads right after they came out the oven; the one on the left is a future pizza crust, the one on the right is just a regular piece of naan.

After that I simply whipped up some guacamole (Gena’s Classic Guacamole is always a good fallback recipe option if you don’t already have one you like to use), slathered that on the naan, and topped it off with some baby spinach, roasted cherry tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, and some freshly squeezed lemon juice. The result: perfection.

The only thing is—and this was something brought to my attention by my dinner guests—this isn’t really a pizza. And I guess that’s right: it’s more of a big piece of naan topped with guacamole and vegetables. However, being a veg*n for as long as I have, I’m pretty used to names never really fitting what I make (cashew ‘cheese’, anyone?). I cut this like a pizza, I ate this like a pizza, and regardless of what it tasted like, and regardless of its utter lack of any tomato sauce or cheese, it’s still a pizza in my mind.

But enough talk—let’s just sit down and eat!

Oh, and by the way: that Great Divide beer you see hanging out in the background there? It’s pretty great. Just sayin’. Now go make yourself some guacamole naan pizza!

VeganMoFo #20/31

Until we eat again,

Willie

My (New) New Favorite Vegan Pizza Recipe

Hi all!

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine wrote me raving about an excellent vegan pizza she’d made with her friends. The secret behind their magic pie was subbing in hummus for the traditional cheese. The idea of hummus pizza in itself didn’t take me too much by surprise, as I had already tried making it once or twice before. However, whenever I did it I just used hummus as the base—that is, as replacing both the tomato sauce and the cheese. My friend, on the other hand, started with a layer of tomato sauce and then piled the hummus on top of that, and then topped the whole thing off with lots of fresh veggies. Long story short: when I reached the end of her message I was practically drooling in my chair, and I knew I would be returning to hummus pizza once again.

And what a lovely return it was. As I’ve remarked here before, I have a bit of a troubled relationship with vegan pizza. You may think that things would be all hunky-dory now that Daiya has invaded Toronto stores, but here’s the thing: I sorta don’t really love Daiya. Granted, as a vegan cheese substitute, it is outstanding, and amazingly better than anything else on the market that I know of. However, I generally like my food to be as close to its natural state as possible, and the idea of piling a pie high with processed synthetic cheese substitute just rubs me the wrong way. For one thing, it sort of feels like cheating, and at any rate, it’s not what I want my food to be about.

This being the case, things end up getting fairly unconventional when I decide to make pizza. For the last year and a half or so, my go-to pizza formula has utilized a cheesy spread made from mashed up white beans that I once described as “my new favorite vegan pizza recipe“. However, now that I’ve tasted today’s Roasted Pesto & Hummus Pizza, I have to say: I think I have a new new favorite.

My strategy was simple, making use of a couple things I had lying around my fridge, which regular readers will probably recognize. I started by making this pizza dough recipe from Smitten Kitchen, which was easy and straightforward yet unquestionably awesome. The crust came out perfectly crisp and the crumb wonderfully soft; the only thing I’d change next time would be to roll it out a little thinner.

Once my dough was ready and shaped, I started piling on my ingredients. I started with a layer of my new favorite thing to eat: Roasted Tomato Basil Pesto from Oh She Glows (as I’ve raved about here). I tried to keep this layer thin, both because I didn’t want things to get too messy, and because I knew that this pesto packs a lotta punch, flavor-wise. And if anything, I probably could’ve gotten away with using a little less than you see here.

Next I piled on the hummus—Roasted Red Pepper Hummus from Oh She Glows, to be exact (which I’ve raved about here). This hummus is fantastic on its own, but it works really even better on pizza I think, as its strong roasted flavor really complements all the other baked ingredients.

Following this, I added the veggies, keeping it fairly simple with just tiny broccoli florets and what I like to call “beet pepperoni”—that is, a beet sliced on a mandoline’s finest setting. If you haven’t tried this as a pizza topping yet, then you must. I will seriously probably be putting beet pepperoni all my pizzas for as long as I live—it’s just that good.

After this all I had to do was bake it! This took a little longer than I anticipated, and when it came out I could hardly wait to take my first bite!

It was outstanding, and without a doubt my (new) new favorite vegan pizza recipe. I love it when friends give me such excellent ideas.

Until we eat again,

Willie

P.S. And yes, I ate the whole thing.