Pizza Toppings & love for tofu
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010When I was still eating animal I loved pizza. It was, without having to quibble, my favorite meal. My absolute favorite pizzas where the ones with an absurd variety of cheeses on them. Now that I’m vegan and unwilling to give up pizza, I have found that the traditional “cheese” pizza just doesn’t cut it. Vegan cheese aren’t readily enough and in enough flavorful varieties to make a cheese pizza tasty enough for me. Add to that the fact that I am a picky eater and you can imagine that a “veggie” pizza suggestion is followed up with me rolling my eyes and saying, “Why bother?” So, I usually top my pizza with vegan meat alternatives like Gimme Lean Sausage and Yves Pepperoni. But the store I went shopping at the other day doesn’t carry my meatless pepperoni. Despite that, I still made pizza yesterday. I’m also out of olives. Though that may be for the best because I like to wear them on my fingertips and do Jazz Hands in the kitchen.
toppings:
- Vegan Gourmet Mozarella cheese
- Vegan Gourmet Cheddar cheese
- Gimme Lean Ground Sausage
I had a picture. I swear I took one. but I’ve misplaced the camera that I took it with. I’d take another picture with my phone but I’ve already eaten the leftovers today. But don’t fret, more picture will be forthcoming in a few days after I have completed my newest cooking experiment: Tofu Pepperoni.
I LOVE TOFU. Srsly. I have a shirt that says so, so it must be true!
Tofu gets a bad wrap. But that is mostly from people who don’t know what to do with it and tried to eat it unflavored. But it is one of the most versatile and amazing ingredients that you can have in your fridge. But getting the best results with it usually involves pressing it to extract it’s extra fluid, freezing, or both.
Pressing tofu is essential when trying to imbue it with outside flavors, like with a marinade. Think of unpressed tofu as a saturated sponge. If you want to get new fluid into the sponge the old fluid needs to be removed.
Freezing tofu is usually done after a cursory pressing, though that’s not entirely necessary. Tofu that has been frozen changes in texture, becoming chewier and more resilient.
This recipe for Tofu Pepperoni looks promising. Unfortunately, my spice rack is missing a few items so I need to go shopping again. So expect a follow up blog post. And next time, it will have pictures.
At this time I would like to talk about a giveaway my fellow blogger & twitterer the Voracious Vegan is doing. She is giving away a TofuXpress tofu press. This handy dandy little device would make my life a whole lot easier. And if you are as serious about tofu as I am then you should enter too. So.. Go read this blog. Then leave a comment, post to twitter about it, write a blog about it, or all three.
see you next time… hopefully with pictures.
As many budget conscious bakers know, a “pizza” stone is expensive and easily replaced by a cheap unglazed quarry tile (or several) from your local home improvement store.? Except that my local home improvement store doesn’t carry them in house.? Smart move on their part.? In order to get my hands on a $2 tile I had to order an entire box of tiles.? 16 tiles in total.? Now, if you are playing along at home then you know that I probably could have bought a “pizza stone” online for the price I paid for these quarry tiles.? But I refuse to admit defeat.? I refuse to pay inflated prices for a baking stone.? Besides, after I subtract what I need from my box of tiles I can give away the other tiles to friends and family and thus keep them from spending way too much money on a “luxury” item.? I know it must seem silly, but it’s just the way I work.