So I’ve been re-thinking my cashew-cheeze recipe for pizza topping. The cashew cream in my broccoli soup (from Isa Does it) is super succulent because of the miso, but a bit thin for pizza, so I decided to conflate the ingredients from two recipes to create a super schmecky thick cashew cheeze to top cooked pizza. Here’s the new recipe:

Savoury Cashew Cheeze for Pizza…

• 2 cups cashews (covered with boiling water for about half an hour and drained)
• 1 cup water retained from the cashew-soaking process
• 1 tsp. Better Than Bouillon No-beef paste
• 3 TBS. miso
• 2 tsp. basil (fresh or dehydrated)
• 1 tsp. oregano (fresh or dehydrated)
• 2 TBS. nutritional yeast
• 3 cloves garlic

Blend the heck out of this. Seriously, put it in the food processor and walk away for about five to ten minutes.

I also tried a new sauce today–it’s a cooked sauce, which is not my usual, but I thought I’d give it a whirl:

Cooked Pizza Sauce

• ¹⁄₂ cup onion, chopped
• ¹⁄₄ cup celery, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
• 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon chili peppers
• ¹⁄₂ teaspoon salt
• ¹⁄₂ teaspoon sugar
• freshly ground black pepper

Saute the onion, celery and garlic and saute until soft and transparent. Add tomato sauce and tomato paste and stir until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and bring to slow simmer. Simmer for half an hour.

Finally, we also found a new brand of vegan mozzarella…though, as I said in my earlier pizza post, the vegan mozzarella gives more of a suggestion of cheese than any kind of taste or even textural quality. This one–by Earth Island–has a decent texture, but all the vegan cheeses are rather pricey. I think this one was close to eight bucks…for half a pound of shredded fake mozzarella! Mind you, we’ve been saving so much by not buying dairy and eggs (and, ahem, vodka) that expensive fake cheese is really a minor indulgence.

It looks like this before cooking…

And like this after (it really does look like melted cheese here):

And here’s dinner–pizza with cashew-cream piped on top and honey and Frank’s on the side for drizzling (how did I ever eat pizza without honey drizzled on it??!):