#tomatofree

Flavorful, mild or spicy, add pasta or rice. Make this delicious Southwestern Santa Fe Soup your own way! There are lots of tips and suggestions for almost every diet. Add rice or pasta for a heartier version. 

Vegan, gluten-free, tomato-free, nut-free option, soy-free option

I thought I'd start with this since it seems to be slowly becoming my signature "thing". I made it for my parents while visiting, and after telling them about how it was dairy/egg/gluten/tomato/etc. free, my dad jokingly called it "The Emperor's New Pizza". But you know what? I kinda really like that name.

This is probably gonna look long and intimidating, but keep in mind it's not just one recipe, it's for several different components of the pizza, most of which can be made ahead of time, used in/on other foods/recipes, or substituted for something pre-made. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. If you're gonna try to make all of this all at once all by yourself, it's a bit of a monster, and does take some time. But for people in certain nutritionally restrictive situations (like, your body can't really process dairy, you have a legit diagnosed phobia of tomatoes, and your boyfriend has celiac and other digestive complications) who also love and miss pizza more than anything, it is so so worth it. Also people will think you're some kind of wizard, if that appeals to you.

I do want to note that this is a work in progress, and also that most of these recipes are not mine, or are mostly not mine (some I have just tweaked), but I will take credit for the sauce - aside from looking at several other tomato-free red sauce recipes for inspiration, I created it (and it is amazing). It not only tastes like pizza sauce, it tastes like really, really, really good pizza sauce. Like sauce you would buy over regular tomato-based pizza sauce even if it cost more. Or at least that's what literally everyone who's ever tried it says.

Just one more note - and this applies to pretty much everything I'll be posting - when it comes to cooking (not baking though - that's a different animal), I'm usually pretty bad at remembering to measure the ingredients I use. I do my best to give approximations, but really, you should take everything with a grain of salt (haaaah) and use your own taste and judgment when making, well, pretty much any(non-baked-good)thing I post.

Also also, the pizza itself is highly customizable. You can really put whatever toppings you want on it, I'm just offering some recipes for those of us who can't/don't want to eat gluten/dairy/eggs/tomatoes/soy/nuts/whatever. So if you want to top it with a baby alligator, hey man, that's up to you. I mean I won't eat it, because ew, but do what makes you happy.

Here are the main components of this thing:

Gluten-Free Vegan Pizza Crust

Tomato-Free Red Sauce 

Veggie toppings

Vegan cheeze (Homemade Cheeze, Daiya, Macadamia Ricotta Salata, and/or any other vegan cheeze you'd like) with soy- and nut-free options

Alright let's do this.

Update 9/28/13: this post was so long I split it up and moved the recipes for the sauce and cheeze to their own posts.

~~~~~VEGGIE TOPPINGS~~~~~

Olive oil for sauteeing

Some sliced red onion

Some sliced bell pepper

A couple big handfuls of spinach and/or kale*

Whatever, man. Like, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, eggplant, pineapple...go nuts.

Method

Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan/skillet over medium heat and toss in the onions and bell pepper (and other non-leaf veggies if you want). When the peppers get a bit brighter and everything starts smelling really good, if you have an electric stove turn the heat off but keep the pan on the burner (for gas, just turn it down to the lowest setting) and throw in about twice as much spinach/kale as you think you're going to want, and toss everything around for a moment. When the spinach starts to wilt, remove the veggies from the heat and set them aside.

* If you're using kale (which actually works really well!), make sure you rub/squeeze it for a while (after washing) until it turns bright green and is noticeably softer (it'll taste better and be easier to digest). Then you can just treat it kinda like the spinach, though it won't wilt as much. 

~~~~~GLUTEN-FREE VEGAN PIZZA CRUST~~~~~

This is still very much a work in progress, but for now I'll put up the recipe I've been using as a base, which is a slightly tweaked version of the one from Gluten-Free Goddess. Also, yes, the flour measurements are in grams. Yes you do need a scale if you ever do any kind of gluten-free baking. A digital one, unless you want to spend more money and waste time and take up more space by first getting a crappy non-digital one that you realize is super inaccurate and unreliable because you can't tell where the arrow is pointing because it spans the space of like 50 grams, and then finally just give in and buy a digital one (yes I'm speaking from experience). You can get them for cheap, and really easily. Here's the one I have - it was like 10 bucks and measures to 0.1 grams and it's one of my favorite things I own. I'll wait............Okay we good? Cool.

Makes 1 small/thick, medium, or large/thin pizza crust, depending on how thick you make it)

Ingredients

Gluten-free flour blend* (280 g total, or roughly 2 cups) [updated 9/28/13 - a friend and I both found this blend to be a bit weirder pre-cooking, but much tastier in the end]:

75 g potato starch (NOT potato flour, they are not the same thing!)

60 g sorghum flour 

60 g tapioca starch/flour (these ones are the same thing, so you're good, brah)

40 g almond flour

20 g chickpea flour

25 g millet flour

Everything else:

1 1/2 t baking powder

1 t xanthan gum OR 1 extra Pixie/flax egg** 

1/2 t salt (fine sea salt if you have it)

1 1/2 T coconut palm sugar OR date sugar OR light brown cane sugar OR whatever other kind of sugar you prefer

1/2 c plus 1-2 T warm soymilk or water (shower temperature, or about 110 F or 43 C)

1/2 packet (3.5 g or 1/8 oz) dry active yeast

1/2 t coconut palm sugar (or sugar of choice) for proofing yeast

2 T olive oil

1 big Pixie or flax egg** (1 generous T Pixie dust or ground flax + 3 T warm/hot water, whisked together and left to set for about 15 minutes)

1/8 t (a few drops) light-tasting vinegar

More olive oil for greasing pizza pan and crust

Corn or chickpea meal or brown rice flour for dusting the pan

*The flour blend is under experimentation. Feel free to use a store-bought gluten-free all-purpose flour blend or your own mix - here is a pretty good DIY guide.

**"Pixie dust" is a combination of 1 part psyllium husk powder, 2 parts chia seeds, and 4 parts flax seeds finely ground up together in a coffee grinder, spice mill, food processor, or blender - here is the original post by Gluten-Free Doctor.

Method

Make your Pixie or flax egg(s) 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flours and dry ingredients.

Proof the yeast in 1/2 cup warm soymilk/water with the 1/2 t sugar: put the yeast and sugar in the water, gently mix it up just a tad and let it sit 5-10 minutes. After sitting, it should get thick and foamy at the top - if it's not, either the water was too hot and you killed the yeast, or the water was too cold and the yeast didn't activate. Try again.

Add the oil, pixie or flax egg, and vinegar to the proofed yeast, and add the whole cup of wet stuff to the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl.

Mix the dough until smooth and slightly sticky. Add the remaining 1/4 cup water or more if you need to (the dough should look more wet/gloopy than regular pizza dough - this is actually pretty much the norm with gluten-free baking, so it's all good). 

Mush the dough around with your hands for a bit and form it into a rough ball-type shape in the bowl. Cover the bowl with a dish cloth or other fabric thing, and put it in a warm cozy spot to rest and rise for about 15 minutes.

While you wait, preheat the oven to 400ºF.

Grease a 12-14 inch pizza pan (or some kind of baking sheet) with oil and dust lightly with gluten-free cornmeal, chickpea meal, or brown rice flour. 

After about 15 minutes, your dough will look bigger than you remember (wow cool!). Pick it up and mush it around with your hands for a bit. Plop it down on the center of the prepared pizza pan. Flatten the dough out from the center toward the edges of the pan with wet hands to create a thin, even pizza shell with raised edges (you will need to wet your hands several times throughout the process - it helps to have a little bowl/cup of water nearby). Make it thinner than you think it should be - it'll get a bit thicker in the oven. 

When the oven's done preheating, place the pizza pan on the center rack.

Bake for 6-7 minutes.

Remove crust from the oven. 

Brush the raised edges with olive oil, and if you wish, sprinkle on some garlic powder or spice blend of your choosing. 

Spread a generous amount of the red sauce or other sauce of choice over the top of the crust up to the edges.

Top with lightly sauteed veggies and barely wilted spinach. Sprinkle on homemade cheeze, daiya, and/or other vegan cheese-type-thing. Crumble bits of the macadamia ricotta salata over the top and a bit directly into your mouth because seriously, god damn. If you wanna go even harder, you can sprinkle on some more fresh chopped basil, other italian herbs, crushed red pepper, roasted garlic, and/or anything else your heart desires. This is your pizza. Make sure it knows that.

Return pan to oven and bake for another 5-6 minutes.

Remove from oven and take pictures to post on instagram/tumblr/facebook/other social networking site while you wait for it to cool just long enough so that it doesn't melt the lining of your esophagus (#emperorsnewpizza @beckdrop [das me!]) - you're gonna want some kind of documentation of this beautiful thing you've just created, because it will probably be gone in about 3 minutes.

Notes on ingredients:

If there's an (East) Asian market near you, you can usually find certain flours and starches - like potato flour and starch, tapioca flour/starch, white and sweet/glutinous rice flour - there for (relatively) super cheap (like $1.30/pound where I go). They also probably have other cool flour stuff like mung bean starch, water chestnut flour, and purple sweet potato flour (I've been meaning to get some of this to play with, it looks so cool). This is also a good place to find other things like agar powder, coconut milk/cream/flesh/drinks/anything, certain delicious fruits (lychee and mangosteen, anyone?), certain herbs and spices (white pepper, lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, whole dry chili peppers, etc.), and a number of other ingredients used in a lot of vegan and gluten-free cooking and baking. But I'll save that for another post.

Speaking of Asian markets, if you're eyeballing that macadamia recipe thinking "I don't care how delicious that is, there is no way in hell I'm spending $20 per lb for some macadamia nuts," there might be an alternative. I haven't tried it yet, but candlenuts might work. You can generally find them in Asian markets - just make sure you roast them before you eat them (!) or you literally might die :) I will try this out though, and report back.

Okay, well, if you try any of this, let me know how it works out!