pretending it's summer

pizza tapenade verte & pizza bianca - plus a negroni - do the trick.

Home cooks - you know when a recipe just miraculously appears in your head, completely unprompted? It doesn’t happen too often for me. Usually I get my inspiration from the exciting things happening in the online cooking space, or from a restaurant I visited recently. You see something, you store it in your head, and you try your own version of it, or use an element of it later on.

But every now and again, something just pops into mind and your imagination runs wild. Here was my thought process for today:

I feel like pizza.

I also feel like a negroni.

*Out loud*: “Blake, do you want pizza?” I don’t listen out for his answer because I’m back in a daydream.

Hmmm! Italian summer. I am so jealous of (insert names of people I know) going to Italy.

Oh shit. I don’t have any tomato paste.

What else could I do? Pizza bianca! I just bought vegan cheese and I made hazelnut and oat cheese. I could do that, with potatoes and mushrooms. Yum.

But I also feel like something fresh. *Looks in fridge*. Those olives have been sitting there a while. Hmmmm. Olive tapenade! Do they even make that with green olives? Oh well, only one way to find out if that’s a good idea.

Ok I’m gonna do a whole setup, negronis and everything. I’ll bring out the martini glasses! I never use those. I should use them more often. They’re so hard to hold though. I’ll play some nice music as I cook and get extremely hot while doing so. I’ll practically be transported to Scopello.

And so the ideas were born, in a hurricane of emotions and lightbulbs dinging up in this ol’ brain of mine. I know a lot of my readers live in the northern hemisphere, so here’s some pizza recipe ideas to ring in the summer months.

pizza base (makes 2 thin crust pizzas) :

• in a mixing bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups flour with 3/4 tsp instant yeast, 1/4 tsp salt and 3/4 tsp sugar.

• slowly add in 2/3 cup warm water and 1 tbsp olive oil.

• knead into a ball, until stretchy.

• cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave to rise for up to an hour (10 mins minimum).

• break into 2 parts and roll them out on a flat surface until desired thickness is reached. place on oven tray and spread bases, cheese, and then toppings on top.

• preheat oven to 220c/425f and bake with toppings for 10-12 min.

pizza tapenade verte:

• blend 100g tofu, handful baby spinach, 5-10 green olives, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast - this is your base.

• topping ideas: multicoloured cherry tomatoes, grilled eggplant or zucchini ribbons, garlic, oregano, artichokes.

pizza bianca:

• make a roux by warming about 50g vegan butter in a saucepan, then add 1 tbsp flour and combine. stir in 100ml milk of choice, salt, pepper, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast, and a handful of vegan cheese. stir until all dissolved - this is the white sauce (bianca) base.

• topping ideas: fried potatoes, mushrooms, garlic, rosemary.

• note - I put the potatoes under the white sauce, as they were already quite crispy!

serving suggestions (for any pizza) :

• dried chilli flakes

• rocket leaves

• garlic oil (fry 1 clove garlic + 4 tbsp olive oil)

• negroni / virgin negroni

Happy summer (or happy pretending it’s summer)! If you need me, mentally I’ll be here - where I was in November last year.