Lazy Sunday Vegan Pizza
It's that time of year here in NYC when we find ourselves between seasons. Summer is over, but we still keep getting some hot days. Football is on but we still keep getting some late season summer produce. We had a busy weekend, so today I made a fast, simple and 'lazy' dinner. We had store-bought gluten free pizza crusts, locally made vegan pesto from Gotham Greens and a couple different vegan cheeses in the refrigerator, so I decided we should have a kitchen sink pizza. We stopped by our neighborhood Sunday farmer's market and picked up some organic heirloom tomatoes, an eggplant and spinach.
We had store-bought gluten free pizza crusts, locally made vegan pesto from Gotham Greens and a couple different vegan cheeses in the refrigerator, so I decided we should have a kitchen sink pizza. We stopped by our neighborhood Sunday farmer's market and picked up some organic heirloom tomatoes, an eggplant and spinach.
When it was time to make the pizzas, I sautéed the spinach in garlic and olive oil and placed it in a bowl, and then added diced eggplant that I tossed in olive oil, Sicilian chili oil and red wine vinegar to the pan to saute`. Chao vegan cheese slices are really really good, and I need to stop buying them! They are officially my favorite vegan cheese product out there because they melt well and they don't have an odd after taste that some of them seem to have. I halved and placed two slices on each pizza crust along with four slices of heirloom tomatoes per crust and put that into a 375 degree oven. While that baked in the oven, I shredded a quarter of a block of Daiya jalapeño havarti cheese into my Gotham Greens vegan pesto and mixed it together. I took the crusts out and added teaspoon sized dollops of the pesto/cheese mixture throughout the crust and then added the diced eggplant and through it in the oven for around 5 more minutes to continue cooking. At the end I added the spinach to the pizzas and let that back for about 5 more minutes.
It was nice to take advantage of the end of summer produce and also empty out our fridge and get help from some store-bought ingredients. My kind of lazy Sunday!
