No-bake skinny pizza (vegan)

No-bake skinny pizza (vegan) 

It’s Friday! It’s been a while since I was this excited about the weekend. It’s been one hell of a busy, busy week. Today I have an awesome, light and delicious recipe for you, that’s perfect for those girls’-nights-in!

When it comes to plant-based eating, there’s only one thing that bothers me; it’s the fact that my choices are very limited when it comes to going out to eat. I mean, thank God for hummus and veggies, but how much hummus and veggies can a girl eat? Whenever I talk about my eating habits, I always tell you that I eat plant-based “most of the time” and that’s because when we go out to eat during the weekend I pretty much always end up cheating a little bit. That’s because it’s really difficult to find a place that also serves vegan, plant-based option (other than the aforementioned hummus and veggies). I noticed that even the salad menus nowadays have chicken or some sort of cheese in it 90% of the time.

A while ago, we went out to eat with my brother and sister, and as usual, everyone was ready to order after 5 minutes, and I kept looking through the menu trying to find something I’d be willing to eat. I ended up ordering hummus and veggies (yawn) and a small flatbread pizza with arugula and mushroom. It did have a little bit of cheese on it and I’m also assuming that the white sauce was not vegan, but it was Sunday, so I wasn’t feeling too guilty about it. Ever since then though, I really wanted to try and come up with a vegan version of that flatbread pizza, because it was just sooo good.

This no-bake skinny pizza is so easy to make and I actually think it’s a lot better than the one I had at the restaurant. To make the white pizza sauce I used full-fat coconut milk, roasted garlic, and some nutritional yeast- this gave it a bit of that cheesy flavor. If you’re worried about tasting coconut milk on your pizza- don’t! The coconut flavor is absolutely non-detectable and you won’t believe that this sauce doesn’t have any cheese in it. I topped it off with some shiitake and oyster mushroom and sun-dried tomatoes  (not the ones soaked in olive oil though!). For my bread I used vegan naan bread- you can use store-bought or make it yourself using this recipe on Richa’s blog right here (I recently discovered her blog, VeganRicha and let’s just say I’m obsessed!).

No-bake skinny pizza (vegan)

1 cup shiitake mushroom
1 cup oyster mushroom
1/4 cup Marsala wine
1 garlic
olive oil
2/3 cup full-fat coconut milk
salt, pepper
1/4 cup or more to taste nutritional yeast
naan bread
2 cups arugula
1 cup sun-dried tomatoes

• Preheat the oven to 400F. Lightly peel your garlic, cut off about 1/5 from the top, drizzle with olive oil, wrap in foil and roast in the oven for about 40 minutes.
• While the garlic is roasting, sauté the mushrooms with a little olive oil until soft. Add some black pepper and salt and the wine. Cook on medium heat until the wine has reduced by half and set the mushroom aside.
• Once the garlic is ready, let it cool off a little then squeeze it out and mix with coconut milk on low heat. Add salt, pepper, and the yeast. The sauce should become smooth and a little thick, you can adjust the seasonings to your liking, I actually ended up adding a bit more yeast to my original 1/4 cup. Turn off the heat and set the sauce aside.
• To warm up my naan, I grilled it up in my panini press, but you can also warm it up in the oven or on a grilling pan.
• Spread the sauce on each naan and top off with arugula, mushroom, and tomatoes, finishing off with freshly cracked black pepper.

This recipe will make about 4 of these skinny pizzas. You can also pre-make the sauce and just keep it in your fridge and use when needed- in this case, you’ll be saving a lot of time and can prepare this on a whim. It’s great as a snack, as a meal and it also goes great with red wine, so it’s a perfect little appetizer that you can also make when you’re entertaining and hello, it’s ideal for a girls’-night-in! The best part is, it doesn’t have any cheese or heavy sauce, so you won’t feel guilty at all. It’s very light, but filling at the same time and even my carnivore of a husband loved it and already asked me to make some of these pizzas this weekend.

The sauce adds a bit of that cheesy, creamy flavor, tomatoes add a sweet touch and mushroom and arugula go perfectly together. I also love adding a lot of freshly cracked pepper to top mine off. :)

So what do you think guys? Will you try making this?