THICK & EASY Pizza

I can't do this. Today we're gonna make something super fun, super filling. You can enjoy it with the whole family. You can make with the kids or not. Definite memory from my childhood. Amazing garlic bread, garlic French bread, garlic bread pizza for all the protein concern. There's plenty of it on here. I got a nice secret for you to show you how to make amazingly tasting vegan cheese on your own at home. Nothing out of the ordinary that you cannot do. I feel like I have pizza all over my face and neck. Maybe I do. This is freaking delicious. It's amazing. You're gonna love this recipe. And if you don't, well, there's plenty of other channels you can watch. And of course Frankie will be with me. I love you, but you know garlic. You know that, you know garlic. So we're gonna make two different kinds. Now I made this delicious pesto earlier this summer or later this summer, a few months back. And I froze some of it. So I can link the video down below or you can just buy your own pesto. But we're gonna use some of this and we're gonna use some leeks. I'm just gonna prep up each pizza separately. So if you wanna just make one, you can make that one or you can make the other, or you can make both. Gonna need a fair amount of garlic. I would say a quarter. I'm just gonna start with a mortar and pestle. Get that in there. Slightly crush them to hold them down. We're just gonna mash them really good. And add a pinch of salt. That'll help draw out all the flavors. You can see that. Add a little bit of olive oil to this. Maybe a third of a cup. We're gonna set this into here. Just to make sure I get everything out of there. I'm just gonna use this in a second. I'm gonna add some leeks. Because I was super careless with my knife and I swiped my hand across the cutting board and hit the edge of it. So I cut my finger. Cut some off. Ow. You won! Derek. It's not too bad. And this just goes to show, I make tons of mistakes and I'm not perfect. So just be careful with those knives, especially the sharp ones. Because, you know, in the last video, we sharpened our knives. And this was nice and sharp. So it's a clean cut. Nobody's perfect. Did you have a good play date? Yeah? Give me a kiss. Oh, give me a... Let me get you a treat. Give me a paw. Good girl. All right, so I'm back. Gonna slice these leeks into rounds. The protein concerned, we're gonna use a little bit of tofu here. Hey, quick one. So from post-cooking, I used a 450 gram block of the extra, extra firm tofu. The one that comes in the C-Low pack, not packed in water. So I'm using half for the white pizza and another half for the red one that we'll be coming up on shortly. Cheers. What I'm gonna do is just shave it. Just as thin as you can get it. Oh, I guess it was here. Can't go without giving Miss Frankie a piece. Okay, one more. Oop. I'm gonna add about one tablespoon of the garlic oil. Oil. We're gonna zest a little bit of lemon in here. This will add some nice poppy freshness to it. One. About five zests. And then we're just gonna squeeze that in. Pinch of salt. Some cracked black pepper. It's okay if you break up some of the pieces. This is super delicious if you love raw garlic. Little bit of lemon garlic in there. Make a good sandwich as well. All right, so the next one, we're just gonna prep up some baby spinach. We'll get the pan nice and hot. I'm just gonna add a touch of olive oil. Not much, just a little bit of salt to the pan. Couple good-sized handfuls. I'm just gonna saute that up. Make sure I get them all. So you could add broccoli to this. You could add anything green. I wanna try to keep it green, so the pesto being green, being a green-white pizza, whatever you wanna call it, white and green pizza, and then we'll have our red one. The green, we'll add the pesto, we'll add the leeks, we'll add the baby spinach. You could add broccoli, you could add courgette or zucchini. And that's it. As soon as you think it's done, like it's wilted, it's done. I'm gonna use a paper towel. No fuss. You can see what I have for the green one. You got the baby spinach. Take care of that in a minute. We got the tofu, seasoned with garlic and lemon. I got some of those leeks, the pistachio pesto, and we have that garlic oil. Now for the red, two of these tomatoes. I gotta admit, the tomatoes over here aren't that great. All right, so we're gonna use the other half of tofu. I'm gonna do the same thing. This one I'm gonna cut in half because I'm gonna do smaller slices, yeah. And we're just gonna shave this down. So just take your time. Go as thin as you want, as thin as you can. You don't need thick pieces. You get more flavor if we do it thinner, and I want them to develop a crispier crust. And guess who's back? Whenever I pull out cheese, our tofu Frankie's here. Get him. Good girl. So these, I'm gonna flavor pepperoni style, or like sausage-y style, kind of pizza I used to like. Sausage and pepperoni. We're just gonna eye these. I'll write the recipe down in the description as usual. So about a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. This is smoked paprika because I just don't have sweet paprika. So smoked paprika, I'm gonna add about a teaspoon of that. Remember, there's no flavor to tofu, so you just wanna add some flavor. I'm gonna use about a teaspoon of oregano, because I want that ultimate sausage-y flavor. Fennel seeds quickly. I didn't do anything with it. There's just a little bit of oil left in it until I clean it. I'm gonna add about a teaspoon of fennel seeds. Fresh cracked black pepper for the bitter flavor. So about a teaspoon. Quick pulverize. Fragrant. I'm still gonna save this for one more thing, because I try to limit how many things I make dirty, so I have less to clean up. We have that garlic oil. I'm gonna add another tablespoon to this. A little bit more of that, just the oil part. Try to get out of it. So you see, we still have quite a bit of this. And again, salt. Teaspoon. Mix this up. I'm just gonna let it sit like this for a couple more minutes while we prep up the rest. For our red pizza base, I have some red sauce. So I made some of my own red sauce, tomato sauce. Just use whatever tomato sauce you want, or just canned tomatoes, whatever you'd like. You're gonna need a little bit of tomato sauce, so about a cup. Then I have those fresh sliced tomatoes, and we have that tofu. Now for our base, I got some nice French bread. I don't know if it's French or not, but it's bread, and it's super fresh from the local bakery in my little village. It smells really, really good. We're gonna preheat the oven and fan to 200 degrees. Pull out my trusty bread knife. Just carefully slice it in half. Onto here. So I can't have this mess. I have to clean up constantly. Always work like you're being watched. I'm gonna take a pan, really lay on it. This is where you get the kids involved. I saw Kenji Lopez do a pizza similar to this. His wasn't vegan. There, nice and flat, just so they're even. Now you get them both the same size. A little bit of the garlic. Just gonna spread it across, just make garlic bread. Spread it out as much as possible. Beautiful. Olive oil here, the sides. I didn't say this was healthy, this was fun. So now you might be wondering what we're gonna add to the top of this, and I'm gonna add some cheese. I've said it before, I'm not the biggest fan of some of the vegan cheeses out there. You know, we're not in America, I don't have access to Miyoko's, which I think Miyoko's is fantastic. She does an amazing job with what she does. The cost of dairy cheese is so much less expensive than vegan cheese, it's kind of ridiculous. You know, we need to start switching that. Subsidies need to start going over to the plant-based side because I'm not eating dairy, and there's many reasons for that. There's plenty, you can check out Earthling Ed about how he talks about dairy. I've even seen Merle, the vegan, her channel. She just did a really good episode on the dairy industry that's worth a watch. I'll link those episodes below. My reason for not having any dairy is not a medical condition. I do not need to be contributing to any more of the needless suffering in the world. Just because I wanna eat good food doesn't mean anything has to suffer for that. Some people don't agree with it. This is the way I live. I'm shooting food cooked with no animal products, and that includes dairy products. In the beginning, cheese is hard to give up. It's hard. It's addictive. It's got shit in it that makes it addictive. The casings, the taste. You grow up on that stuff. I get it. I adjusted my palate. I'm now vegan. I've been vegan for almost eight years in January. I'm super happy about that. And before those eight years, I was learning how to cook vegan for six or seven years. I was training myself from being a regular chef to doing a lot more plant-based and focusing solely on the whole foods, plant-based, no oil diets when I worked with Whole Foods. And then the day I left Whole Foods, I went vegan. And so since then, it'll be eight years in January. I feel great. Anyways, that's my reason. Not trying to convince anybody to do anything, but if you wanna watch what I do and try the things that I make, I applaud you. Cheers. I found a great way to make this cheese that is super delicious on pizzas, and I'm gonna show you right now. I'm gonna use the same container, but I have two different vegan cheeses. This one has a little bit of smoky flavor, and I bought the shreds. There are blocks you can buy. They're good. They taste great on their own. I like them on their own. They're good, but they don't melt very well. So I need to fix that. What I'm gonna do, add them to this. I'm just gonna pound them a little bit, not much, just to break them down. You can do this at home, easy. So whatever vegan cheese you want, you can do this with. Now it's just like crumble. But what I've discovered, and I love, it's more economical if I buy some vegan cheese, and then I tend to always buy this yogurt, the Oatly Greek Style Yogurt. Not sponsored by them at all. I really like this yogurt. I think it's great. No soy, just oat. One, two, maybe four tablespoons. All right, you convinced me. We'll do five tablespoons, because it's two pizzas. I'm gonna add a pinch of salt. Mix this up. It's kind of like a cross between a burrata and a nice mozzarella. When I get done with this and put it on the pizza. I'm gonna pop these in the oven. Five minutes. I just wanted to toast up the edges so that it's nice and hot. Start with the pesto. It's gonna add a good amount, so probably half of it. And these will form some nice crispy edges. That's why I wanted them so thin. This is probably overloading it. You don't have to add this much, but this is gonna be my dinner. Leeks, even like that. Baby spinach. Just gonna make sure this is all squeezed out. Every piece we get. Same thing. Pepperoni flavored tofu. Again, this is a lot. I'm gonna kind of cover this. If I have this much left, I'm gonna use it for something else. And last but not least, we're just gonna dollop it. Cotta burrata, a little melty mozzarella. Press down. Could be just called an open-faced sandwich, I guess. This is gonna go in the oven, just like this, for about 10 to 12, 15 minutes. I'll check on it and let you know. Siri, sweetheart, please set the timer for 10 minutes to start. Good. It's been about 15 minutes. That looks freaking gorgeous. Amazing. Got the ridges underneath. Awesome. Man, it smells delicious. Look at that. So good. Voila. Looks so good. Smells delicious in here now. They're messy and delicious. That's kind of a big piece. I guess I'll have to eat this one. Grab some of these first. Now, I really love the cheese mixture, like, and how this melts in it. So you don't have to cover it. No worrying about it. And it just delivers that flavor that I'm looking for. It's really, really good. Sorry, Frankie. I can't really give you so much garlic in this. I love you. Here, I'll give you this though. Aside from the amazing pesto that we made earlier this summer, and that cheese, I'm really getting the lemon and the pepper from the tofu and the leeks. It's really, really satisfying. Let's try, see what I can get out of this. Looking pretty damn good. And now I got it all over my face. Oh, it's so freaking good. That flavor of the pepperoni flavored tofu really coming through. It's really nice. Yeah, super good. I thought I might call some friends up and give them this bite. Delicious. If you liked this video and you had fun watching or, and you want to cook along with me some more, check out these videos over here. Give me a paw.