Vegan Ranch Spinach & Sausage Pizza

February 1, 2022

Meaty, cheesy, crispy deliciousness!

Serves: 4

Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

1 box Simple Mills Gluten Free Pizza Dough, option to sub in your favorite dough

apple cider vinegar (for the dough)

olive oil (for the dough)

1 package Beyond Meat Breakfast Sausage links

1 onion

1 clove garlic

.5 lb shitake mushroom

1 handful spinach

1 batch cashew cheese

ranch powder

Salt

Pepper

2 Tbsp high heat oil

Cook the Simple Mills pizza mix according to the instructions on the box. If you have a pizza stone, preheat it with the oven. The first bake on this pizza dough will be done on a cookie sheet. You can also do the second bake on a cookie sheet, but we like how crispy the crust is when the second bake is on a hot pizza stone.

While the dough is baking, slice the shitake mushrooms, onion, and mince the garlic. Heat a pan and fry the sausage links until crispy on all sides (the sausage will release oil as it cooks, so no need for oil in the pan). Once fried, slice the sausages into small chunks.

Fry the onions and mushrooms until the onions are browned and soft and the mushrooms are browned and slightly crispy. Add salt and pepper to taste. This works better if you cook the mushrooms and onions separately, however sometimes do this in one pan if I’m not too worried about getting the perfect texture. Once these are almost fully cooked add the minced garlic into one of the pans (or the one pan if you are doing them together) and stir for about 1-2 more minutes while the garlic browns. Finally, throw the spinach in and stir slightly just to wilt a bit.

Next, make the cashew cheese if you haven’t already.

Now, if you have a pizza stone, transfer dough to the stone, flipping it over. If you don’t have a stone, I like to flip the dough over on the cookie sheet before adding toppings. To top, first spread the cheese in an even layer over the whole pizza. Then, do a heavy dusting of ranch powder over the entire cheese pizza. Next, add the spinach, garlic, onion, and mushrooms. Finally, top with the sausage chunks. Put the whole pizza back in the oven for just 5-10 minutes to get everything warm and melded, but not so much that anything burns (everything is already fully cooked).

Slice and enjoy!

Chickpea Crepe with Carrot Top Cheese

June 2, 2020

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade; it feels important to us to acknowledge these three Black people who were recently murdered by the police. Right now we are feeling grief, loss, anger, anxiety, and extreme sadness that we live in a society that deems White people worthy and needing protection while condemning Black people as something to fear and kill. Rachel Lewitt, one of Camille’s mentors, pointed out that we are currently seeing some of the largest demonstrations since the 60s, and we can create radical change y’all. We can resist!

We’ve been noticing a lot of White people just now realizing that racism still exists, feeling the injustice, and wanting to take action. Some of the things coming up for White people right now are anger, fear, being overwhelmed, confusion, the feeling of wanting to use our white privilege to end racism, the need to fix this, wanting to be good and do the right thing, and wanting to take action. Awesome, we need all of us in this work! We all need to be fighting racism wherever it shows up and if you are reading this and you are White, racism lives in your body, and ours too. To be White in the US is to be indoctrinated into the lies of white supremacy culture. To be White in the US is to be racist. If you feel activated by these statements, that is a normal response and is part of what will keep you from being able to do the work.

If you’d like to talk to us about this, reach out to us at chickpeasandspice@gmail.com. We’re here to process this with you, no judgement. This is inside our bodies too and until we all look at it, face it, understand it, and extract it we will continue to do harm.

Rachel Lewitt, a wake-up leader in Portland, who is deeply inspired by and mentored by Holistic Resistance says, “when White people become under-resourced, we become even more dangerous”. Right now we are living through the global trauma of a pandemic as well as the trauma of living under the oppression of white supremacy culture. If you, like me, are new to seeing the ways in which white supremacy culture systemically targets and kills black people as well as erasing indigenous people this can be a lot to take in. Remember to go slow. Don’t expend all your energy this week yelling and then assume you have done your part. As Aaron Johnson from Holistic Resistance says, “this is a marathon”. Our question is why are you doing this work? What will keep you doing this work?

If you aren’t White, we hope you are getting rest, nourishment, and time for whatever it is that you need.

One of the ways we resource ourselves is to cook delicious food and eat it. This is our most recent joyful recipe: A delicious crispy chickpea crepe with cheesy carrot top cheese and fresh sugar snap peas topped with tangy pickled onion. May it bring you nourishment that will help sustain you as you do the deep work of opposing racism where it comes up both internally and in the world.

Serves: 2-4

Time: 1 hr

Ingredients

2 cups sugar snap peas

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup oil for frying

For the Pickled Onion

1 tiny onion

Juice of half a lime

1/2 tsp salt

For the Carrot Top Cheese

1 cup cashews soaked

1 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp water

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1 clove garlic

juice and zest of 1/2 lemon (about 2 tbsp lemon juice)

small handful of carrot tops

2 tbsp nutritional yeast (optional)

For the Chickpea Crepe

1 1/2 cups chickpea flour

1 1/4 tsp sea salt

1 3/4 cups water

3 tbsp olive oil

3/4 tsp rosemary

Cover cashews with cold water and put in the fridge to soak for 30 minutes. Thinly slice the onion and add it and the salt and lime juice to a bowl. Set the onions aside to pickle, this takes at least 30 minutes. If you have some leftover, they keep in the fridge. Store them with the liquid. Mix the chickpea flour, salt, water, olive oil, and rosemary and whisk until smooth and let sit for 30 minutes.

Remove the ends from sugar snap peas. Heat pan with a high heat oil until it is medium to high heat. Add the sugar snap peas and cook until blistered and golden brown on one side. Flip. Salt while the second side cooks. Remove from heat when the second side has golden brown parts and set aside.

Combine all the cheese ingredients and blend until smooth, scraping down the sides of your blender or food processor as you go. The cheese keeps for 1 week. You can freeze and use it later if you don’t need the whole batch.

You can use either a food processor or a Vitamix blender for this. Using a food processor will give the cheese slightly more texture and a Vitamix will make the cheese extra silky/creamy. Both are good! I would not recommend trying to make this cheese in a blender that isn’t high powered, as the nuts can be hard on the motor and the cheese will come out with a strange texture. Note, I don’t always soak the cashews and can say from first hand it isn’t 100% necessary when using a Vitamix. It does however help take care of your equipment and can make the final product creamier, so I do recommend it, if you have the time. Because this is a thicker cheese recipe, if using a Vitamix we recommend using the tamper while blending. If you don’t have this you can add a bit of extra water to help with the blending process.

Using the same pan (clean first if there is any residue), heat a small amount of oil. Once the oil is hot, add 1/3 cup of chickpea batter to the hot pan. Tilt the pan to spread out the batter, and cook until golden brown and crispy on one side. Be patient, when the bottom is golden brown and crispy, the edges of the top will start to show color. Flip the crepe over and cook until speckled with golden brown on the second side. Cooking crepes to have a crisp but flexible texture takes some practice. Some tips are make sure your oil is hot before you add the batter. Don’t add too much batter. Allow the first side to cook until an even color is achieved before flipping. Remember, the first pancake rule applies to crepes as well. Your first crepe might come out under cooked and crumbly. Don’t be discouraged, keep cooking, be patient, and future crepes will be better.

We often cook as many crepes as we want to eat when we first make this dish. We then refrigerate the batter and fry fresh crepes for leftovers. When cooking batter that has been refrigerated, make sure to stir thoroughly before frying and if it is too thick, you can add a little water to thin it out.

To assemble the crepes, spread some carrot top cheese onto the crepe, top with sugar snap peas and onions. Try not to transfer too much of the lime juice when you transfer the onion onto a crepe. Roll them up and enjoy!

Cashew Cheese

January 14, 2020

This cashew cheese recipe is easy to make and has so many uses! It can be a delicious spread on bagels (add some chives to make it super fancy), pour it over some pasta for an easy cream sauce, put it on pizza for a white sauce, add it to soups for some creamy goodness, or add to some mashed potatoes for that cheesy deliciousness. Since I make nut milk a couple times a week, I usually use the pulp from that milk as a base for my cashew cheese. If you don’t have nut milk pulp to use up, don’t worry, simply substitute additional cashew pieces for the pulp.

Serves: 2 cups

Time: 30min (15min active)

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups nut pulp

3/4 cups cashews

1 tbsp olive oil

1/3 cup water

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1 small clove garlic roughly chopped

juice of half a lemon (2 tbsp)

Soak the cashews in hot water for 15 minutes.

Combine all ingredients and blend until smooth, scraping down the sides of your blender or food processor as you go. Keeps for 1 week. You can freeze and use later if you don’t need the whole batch.