



Vegan Mini Pizzas with three different flavors.

Here in Ghent, Belgium, we have been having good luck with nice late summer weather for a couple of weeks. I am not sure if this is a good thing though. As I am afraid that we’ll have a very cold spring and it would kill all my seedlings which I wish to grow next year. It happened last year. My neighbor just planted tomatoes, and the next day the unusually late frost killed his little plants. I gave him some of mine.





My plot is shadier than other peoples’, since it located right next to the “natural reserves” area. I can’t demand our dear city to chop down all trees surround my plot. The thing I can think about to grow nice crop like tomatoes is to grow a little bit earlier. As you can see with this kind of extreme weather and climate change, it’s very difficult to rely on average temperature to determine the best planting date. That’s one of the good reason why it’s important that we all eat vegan foods, isn’t it?





With this late summer weather in autumn, we had some nice harvest of unexpected aubergines. They were not big. But the flavor is fantastic. We decide to give these little harvests some extra value: mini pizzas. It is so satisfying.





Pizza dough





Ingredients:

Flour 300 gram.

Water 150 gram.

Yeast

Sugar

Salt





Step By Step





If you have an organic garden you might hear about Charles Dowding from the UK. In our garden we use his “no dig” technique to save us time weeding. In the kitchen, we use the “no knead” in his Gardening Myths book. So what is “no knead” technique? Yes, as its description, just no need to knead your dough. This is not necessary, not only saving us time, but also saving the money for buying a bread machine.





First, in a bowl put 150 grams of warm (not hot) water, and add some dry instant yeast (5 grams should do the trick). Then add sugar or honey, 10 grams. Stir it a bit with a spoon so everything is in the warm water. This activates the yeast in about 5 minutes.





After 5 minutes, this should be a little bit bubbly or alive… add 300 grams of flour and a teaspoon of salt at this point. Knead this together by hand, just enough that it is a firm ball. No need to do any additional kneading. Put it back in the bowl and if possible, place it in a warm place.





After about half an hour, it should have risen considerably. Knead it for a half a minute or so to make it small again. With pizza it is not necessary to let it rise again, it will do that in the oven. Just make sure the oven is warm enough though, the warmer the better!





Tomato Sauce with Aubergine





Ingredients:





Cherry tomatoes 500 gram

Aubergine 1 small

Plant oil

Salt

Spicy sauce (optional)





Step By Step





Chop the aubergine into small pieces. Fry them together with 250 grams of cherry tomatoes with some oil (the rest of the cherry tomatoes will be used as topping). When it becomes a sauce, blend it in a food processor, add some salt and (if you like) some spicy sauce. Take some of your pizza dough and roll a few little pizzas (as many as you can put at once on your oven tray). Put the sauce on top of mini pizza dough and add the 250 grams of cherry tomatos that are left over as topping. Send them into the oven.









In total we get 6 mini pizzas with tomatoes with aubergine as the sauce. It's very simple, but they are really so tasty.





Pumpkin Sauce





We actually use leftover of our pumpkin soup to make pizzas. I currently do not want to give my recipes out as I still want to give it another try until I can confirm it is really good enough to publish. So please forgive me, as I am currently doing some experiments. And don’t worry I still have a lot of winter squash at home. I can tell you that I use my home grown Uchiki Red kuri.





Beetroot sauce





Ingredients:





Beetroot

Pine nuts

Small aubergine

Salt





Step By Step





As before, fry some sliced bits of aubergine and add grated beetroot. Add salt to taste and blend it in a food processor. Add some pine nuts. Place on top of some more pizza bases.

For these tiny pizzas, ten minutes should be enough to make them crispy. Be careful not to leave them in too long as they really do not need a lot of time.









It seems that I can eat more mini pizzas than one normal size.



