Showing posts with label pizza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pizza. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 June 2014

magic oven [toronto]

Retrieved from the plane and escorted via PT to my home for my stay in Toronto, I gathered with my international girl gang at Magic Oven on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. Magic Oven is a delightful pizza restaurant that caters to a variety of diets (including vegan and gluten free), lets you modify anything as much as you wish, and allowed us to ask a million questions and stay for a long time as we drank wine and ate pizza.

Despite the presence of several good looking vegan pizzas on the menu, I decided to build my own. I went for a wholemeal base, with tomato + garlic sauce, daiya, sweet potato, thyme roasted mushrooms, and something infused spinach (I can’t remember, it was three days ago). It was so gooooooood. It was a really happy introduction to Toronto’s vegan food. 

There was also vegan cake and vegan mousse available but regrettably I was too full to even consider it. 

No pictures because you know what pizza looks like. 

798 Danforth Ave (and other locations)
Toronto 


Stairs everywhere. CC payment at table. Okay lighting. Super accommodating. We have started calling it Magic Coven and I like it. Would eat there again. 

Saturday, 18 December 2010

plush pizza vi

It has been a long time between visits for me to Plush Pizza, about five or six months. I went there twice recently, and as I gazed upon the menu I realised I had never, in all my visits, tried the margharita pizza!

margharita at plush

It was good, but nowhere near a favourite, and I will be honest I picked most of the greenery off, and found that the garlic was a bit overwhelming. And with the owners selling, at this point no one knows if it will continue as an amazing vegetarian eatery, or change in to omni hands, so for now I will continue stuffing as much satay pizza in to my mouth as possible.




Previous visits: one, two, three, four, five.


Plush Pizza
85 Burwood Road
Hawthorn

GF options (including bases) available

Sunday, 20 June 2010

smoked tofu pizza revelation

Danni and I have become quite blase about our home made pizzas. As spectacular as some shop pizzas are, we think we've got our technique, style and flavours down pretty well; we know what we like and how to make it, and we've been pretty happy with that.

Recently, due to a dearth of ingredients, we made a couple of new combinations, and one, in particular, was so tasty we were sad they weren't all that pizza.

smoked tofu pizza

OH YEAH

smoked tofu + cheezely pizza (fore) and tomato and lettuce pizza (back)

We didn't even have pizza bases for this - our pizza dough failed to proof, confirming some suspicions we've had for a while now, that our yeast has gone bad (it says best before August 09). Fortunately, we had some pita bread floating around from Danni's lunch, so we decided, reluctantly, to utilise those instead.

This meant that we reduced the baking time and temperature (down to 150C for 15 minutes), and the bread was still crisp where it had no toppings. BUT OH THE TOPPINGS.

On the pizza base, we added tomato paste, crushed garlic, and dried oregano and basil. On top of this we placed thinly sliced roma tomato and button mushrooms, and then some chunks of smoked tofu. On the top we grated some Cheezly Mozzarella, thinly layered.

IT WAS AMAZING. A smoked tofu pizza revelation, if I may.

Thursday, 8 April 2010

plush pizza v, hawthorn

Saturday night saw us back at Plush Pizza, introducing Christine to the greatest vegan pizza that Melbourne has to offer.

having a plush party

We went for the satay pizza, the tom yum pizza, the ben special, and a garlic pizza. OH YEAH. This was, however, a little bit too much food for us - three larges and a medium between four people (Jo came too), as it turns out, is too much to eat in one sitting. But we took it home, so that's okay!



Previous visits: one, two, three, four.


Plush Pizza
85 Burwood Road
Hawthorn

GF options (including bases) available

Friday, 2 April 2010

plush pizza iv, hawthorn

We've actually got plans to go to Plush Pizza tomorrow night for dinner, so I thought I'd better blog this before I get too far behind.

the aztec and the potato pizza

Continuing in our campaign to try every pizza on the plush menu, our last visit featured the Aztec (mozzarella, a mild chilli mix containing mixed beans, red onion and capsicum, sliced roma tomato and a sprinkle of cheddar. Garnished with and slices of fresh avocado) and the Potato Swoon, which tasted like eating potato gems on a pizza (something to which I am not adverse...).

The Aztec was very delicious. I'm finding that I'm really enjoying pizzas with mushy, heavy, saucy toppings. This had a little tiny bit of spice, and the avocado went on afterwards, giving a cold contrast to the spicy beans. Really good! Definitely a competitor for the top pizza.

The potato was good as well, I hadn't envisaged something like potato gems (rather than potato slices), so that was cool.

Previous visits: one, two, three.


Plush Pizza
85 Burwood Road
Hawthorn

GF options (including bases) available

Friday, 5 March 2010

plush pizza iii, hawthorn

I keep forgetting to blog about our most recent visit to Plush Pizza!

primavera pizza at plush

This was Tuesday last week, after my parents and my sister went back to Perth. I was not feeling well, and considered suggesting that some errant family member had left me with a cold!

So anyway, as I wasn't feeling very well we only shared one large and one small pizza between the three of us. We picked the primavera pizza for the large, and (OF COURSE) the garlic for the small.

The primavera was okay, but nothing special. A perfectly servicable pizza, but if I'm going to go to a vegetarian pizza place I don't really want pizza that I can get at any old pizza place.

Still want to try the chunky and the aztec. And some other things.

Previous visits: one, two.


Plush Pizza
85 Burwood Road
Hawthorn

GF options (including bases) available

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

plush pizza ii, hawthorn

We only went to Plush Pizza two weeks ago, and it's on the other side of the city, but last night we were in the mood for pizza and didn't want Mr Natural, we didn't want to drive to Eat Pizza, so we rang Jo to see if she was doing anything and trekked right on back to Hawthorn.

Jo, having tried all but three of the pizzas on the menu, insisted that Danni and I pick different pizzas from our previous visit.

Tom Yum by Plush

I didn't hesitate before ordering the Tom Yum Pizza. It was totally worth it! From the menu: Mozzarella, button mushrooms, red onion, capsicum, sliced roma tomato, fried tofu and Thai tom-yum sauce. Garnished with fresh coriander. It wasn't quite like eating tom yum on a pizza but it was very delicious! A++ will order again. And I really enjoyed the fresh coriander on top, which is a big thing for me!

Verdi by Plush

Next up, the Verdi, one of the three that Jo had not previously tried. This was okay. Jo and I liked it well enough, but wouldn't be clamouring to order it again. Danni on the other hand, loved it. From the menu: Mozzarella, pesto, semi-sundried tomato, roasted capsicum, rocket leaves, olives and fried tofu. The pesto was tasty, but the rocket was shriveled and dried from its time in the oven, and I didn't enjoy its crispiness.

Garlic by Plush

Both times we've been now, I've ordered a small garlic pizza, in lieu of actual garlic bread. It's pretty good! Dry and crisp and garlicy, it's delicious!

Plush Pizza
85 Burwood Road
Hawthorn

GF options (including bases) available

Friday, 29 January 2010

plush pizza, hawthorn

We've had some terrible to excellent experiences in pizza since we went vegan, but I will be honest - all of those experiences were at home, rather than at a store. I think that our recent pizzas of awesome are a testament to that. We just hadn't had a fantastical, amazing pizza from a pizza shop.

two slices

That changed on Saturday, when we ventured over to Plush Pizza with Jo.

It was amazing. AMAZING. Featured here is the Satay Pizza (because penguins love pizza) and, at Jo's insistence, the Ben's Special. Not featured is the garlic pizza I ordered in lieu of garlic bread.

The satay pizza featured fried tofu, red onion, mushrooms, and roast zucchini with a satay sauce. It was fantastic. I would have eaten it all by myself, not sharing it, if I could have. I really want to eat it again. A lot.

satay pizza and ben's special at plush pizza

The Ben's Special was surprisingly tasty. It had balsamic vinegar, which is an instant face pull for me, I find it an unpleasant addition to just about anything. So it was to my surprise that rather than being defeated by a pizza featuring balsamic vinegar, I found it blended really well with the avocado, tomato, mushrooms and mozzarella.

The prices at Plush Pizza are a little on the expensive side, but it is definitely worth it for an amazing vegan pizza. And the venue is cosy but friendly, with comfy seating and some nice looking mirrors. And postcards. And it comes recommended by others!

on the wall


Plush Pizza
85 Burwood Road
Hawthorn

GF options (including bases) available

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

pizzas of awesome

We've had a recent run of home made pizzas, and recently invited J over to share in the noms.

Using our usual pizza base (but without wholemeal, as we are all out), we put together three awesome pizzas.

potato and zucchini pizza

Potato and zucchini was J's idea. I sliced and fried the potatoes, then we spread out a thin layer of tomato paste with some crushed garlic and some fresh herbs, and then went to town with the potato and zucchini. This pizza was super delicious (I love potato).

tomato and spinach pizza

I visited Radical Grocery in order to pick up some Cheezly, going for the mozzarella variety. Cheezly is always a bit on the expensive side, so we went easy, using about a third of the bar. We cut big slices (but thin) of tomato for this one, because that is my favourite way - it really helps retain the moisture and fills your mouth with delicious tomato flavour. Again, fresh herbs from the garden, and some spinach.

dessert pizza

To round it out, I caramalised some apples and pears in brown sugar, and used the Sweet William chocolate spread on the base. I also crumbled some of their white chocolate in amongst the pear and apple pieces, and when it came out of the oven I carefully sprinkled icing sugar over the top.

Delicious! I love making pizza. It's lots of fun, and I know it's not going to be oozing oil (unless I want it to be), or accidentally covered in cheese.

ETA Danni claims dessert pizza was originally her idea, when we were still living in Perth. So I give credit to her!

Friday, 27 November 2009

mr natural vegetarian pizza [north fitzroy]

With the assistance of Google Maps, we worked out that we are just within the 4km delivery radius specified by Mr Natural Vegetarian Pizza. So one lazy evening we decided to take advantage of this excellent and fortuitous piece of geography, and order in some pizza.

eggplant pizza from Mr Natural Vegetarian Pizza

The eggplant pizza was delicious, but not super exciting.

pumpkin pizza from Mr Natural Vegetarian Pizza

The pumpkin on the other hand was very delicious! I ate that one right up.

Mr Natural's prices are a bit on the expensive side ($16.40 for some of the large pizzas) but very delicious. They also do gluten free bases, for a small extra fee. They also have vegan cheese of the melty good kind.

Mr Natural Vegetarian Pizza
469 Brunswick Street
North Fitzroy
Open every night

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

a weekend getaway of in-house noms

Went down South to Eagle Bay for the weekend, it was awesome.

The plan for the weekend was to hang out with fabulous friends, play games, and eat a lot of food, and that is exactly what we did.

We started our long weekend of noms on Thursday evening, with some pizza. Gilli made the pizza base in Perth, and it rose on the drive down. We ended up with four pizzas, two vegan and two not-vegan.
Our pizzas were delicious, I love a good home made pizza. Gilli had made two different types of base, one herbed and one plain, and we covered them with awesome things like pumpkin, fresh basil, and avocado. We also had this amazing tomato and cashew pesto that Greg had picked up from a craft fair earlier this year, it was a little spicy and delicious on the pizza, and as a spread on bread!

pizza

Friday’s breakfast was all vegan but for the ice-cream. I made pancakes, and Kandace made waffles, and Gilli stewed some apples, which was awesome. We supplemented with banana, golden syrup, and nuttelex. The waffle mix was new, and wasn’t quite viscous enough to work properly in the waffle maker, but it was still awesome!

breakfast #1: pancakes and waffles

At lunch we went to Samudra, a vegetarian restaurant in Dunsborough. Review to follow! (It was delicious) ETA review here.

Friday dinner was a roasted extravaganza, featuring roast pumpkin, roast potato, roast sweet potato, roasted carrot, roast mushrooms and roasted beetroot. Roasted mushrooms are amazing. Amazing! They were field mushrooms, stems removed, sprinkled with oregano and parsley and some other herbs, and I am absolutely going to roast mushrooms from now on. It also included beans, peas, carrots, and one of those Sanitarium roast things.

dinner #2: roast

On Saturday morning Greg and I baked jam thumbprint cookies and lemon and poppy seed muffins. Of course, this delayed breakfast somewhat, but it was worth it.

lemon and poppy seed cupcakes

We finally started cooking a massive fry up for breakfast, including hashbrowns, sausages (vegan and not), toast, tomatoes, mushrooms, and sweet potato hash browns. There was also tea, and jam, and more of the awesome pesto, which featured heavily throughout the weekend.

breakfast #2

The sweet potato hash browns were an experiment, and it wasn’t until I started googling that I discovered ‘hash’ means so many different cooking related things! But we wanted hashbrowns, delicious fried flat goodness, and they were fantastic, crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. The recipe needs some tweaking, but in general we boiled the potato (peeled and diced) until it was soft but not super soft, then roughly mashed with five tablespoons of plain flour, combined them into cakes and fried them in the frypan for a few minutes. Incredibly delicious!

sweet potato patties

Saturday dinner was nachos and tacos, simple and fun. I like seeing what toppings people pick.

dinner #3

In preparation for Sunday breakfast, late Saturday night I cooked a pumpkin saag and some dahl. The dahl was my usual recipe, which I know without looking and is so tasty, so my favourite. The saag was an attempt at the pumpkin saag from Veganomicon, but we’d left the recipe on the kitchen counter at home and so I worked from memory. I added a sliced chilli, seeds out, to give it some flavour, and forgot the cinnamon and whatever dried herbs go in it, and I added garlic and ginger. It was different, but still tasty. We served the curry with roti and rice.

breakfast #3

Before we left on Sunday afternoon, more baking was to be had, for the trip back to Perth, and I made a whole lot of sushi.

An awesome weekend of noms. D and I were also very appreciative of our friends, not just for their awesomeness in general, but for their awesomeness in ensuring strict separation between vegan implements and non-vegan implements, to minimise cross-contamination.

Warp speed, Mr Sulu

If you are interested in photos of other parts of our weekend, you can find them here

Friday, 8 May 2009

spinach pesto with tomato pizza

We were super excited to make pizza from scratch on Tuesday - we made our own pizza base, and our own pesto, and it was the greatest pizza we've ever eaten. I was so excited, I want to do it again soon!

The pizza base cooked light and soft, and it was so delicious. It was uncomplicated to make, and didn't need that long to rise, and now that I've had homemade pizza base I'm not sure I want to go back to store bought.

completely homemade vegan pizza

tomato and pesto pizza

ingredients
1 large pizza base
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
1 clove garlic, minced
about half a cup of spinach pesto (maybe more - I didn't really measure)
two roma tomatoes
a handful of spinach leaves, roughly shredded
some sliced olives
olive oil

method
Combine tomato paste and garlic, and spread thinly across pizza base. Thickly spread the pesto on top. Don't spread all the way to the edge - leaving some gap helps the crust rise and form and be delicious. Slice the roma tomatoes so they are circles, and place around and across the pizza. Cover with some olives and spinach leaves, and drizzle the olive oil over the top.

Bake in the oven at 200C for about 20-25 minutes.


spinach pesto
pound together half a bushel of shredded spinach leaves (not the stems), with a large handful of pinenuts, and a lot of olive oil.

pizza base

loosely adapted from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, whereby 'loosely' I mean D was very approximate in the measurements and times and things, but the ingredients are the same.

1 1/2 cups of flour, half plain half wholemeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
tablespoon of yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoonish of oil

Sprinkle yeast over water, leave for a few minutes, then add sugar, stir to dissolve. Sprinkle a teaspoon of flour over the top and leave it for 10 minutes until it froths. Put flour and salt into a bowl, add yeast mix and oil. Beat with a wooden spoon, then knead for about ten minutes. Oil a bowl, put ball into bowl, move around so the ball is oiled. Leave for an hour to rise.

After it has risen, punch it down, then roll out (or attempt to spin out). Makes one big base.

Wednesday, 6 May 2009

picnic food: pizza pinwheels

Today is a beautiful Autumn day here in Perth, 27C as I type this and nice and warm in the sun. Although by early May we've usually shifted into slightly cooler weather, it's a little behind this year and we've been taking advantage of this by going on picnics where possible.

This is a super fast and very easy picnic idea for your next picnic. It was actually my first try making them, and I'm very happy with how they turned out. Plus, picnics! How I love them.

pizza pinwheels

pizza pinwheels

ingredients
sheets of puff pastry, defrosted
some tomato paste
dried oregano
fresh basil, torn
freshly cracked pepper
awesome and malleable fillings such as thin pieces of marinated artichoke hearts, or sun-dried tomatoes

method

Grab a sheet of puff pastry, smear with tomato paste all the way from the end closest to you, across the edges, and leave about a centimetre of pastry free of paste at the side away from you. Shake over oregano, and some fresh basil and pepper, quantities to your preference. At this point you can roll it straight up, or add some artichokes or something that rolls. Roll it up, starting with the side closest to you, not super tight but still quite compact. Leave to sit in a roll in the fridge, and continue with another sheet. After the roll has been in the fridge for about ten minutes, cut through the roll into about eight pieces.

Place on a baking tray flat, that is with an open end facing up and the other facing down.

Bake, single layered, in the oven at 150C for ten to fifteen minutes, or until the puff pastry has started to puff. You may need to flip them halfway through. Eat hot or cold.

Thursday, 22 January 2009

what to do when your bread fails to rise?

I made my very first attempt at making bread from scratch last week! It was the rosemary bread in Veganomicon, and the yeast totally failed to activate. I don't know if this is because I used standard yeast from the shops and the recipe calls for activated, or if the recipe just fails to note this (I am at work), but yes, it was a gigantic failure.

pizza on homemade dough

I didn't want to just throw the dough out, so we made pizza instead, and that worked great. The pizza needed to be in the oven for about twenty minutes at 190C, it crisped up really well. And I'm glad to know failed bread works for pizza base, because there's more bread making in my future, and it's nice to have a fall back if it turns in to more fail bread.

Thursday, 4 December 2008

pizza

I'm going to a pizza place for a work Christmas function next week, and one of my colleagues was horrified to discover my vegan status. "But what will you eat?!" she asked, very loudly.

There are many pizza options as a vegan. Some caution must be taken, as the pizza base may have been made with egg or dairy, but overall some creativity, like any other time, can result in a delicious vegan meal.


pita bread pizza

My favourite combination is roasted pumpkin, spinach, artichokes and avocado. Sweet potato makes a good substitute for the pumpkin, and D has taken to drizzling balsamic vinegar over the pizza when we make it at home. I prefer using an olive oil, which is especially essential when your pizza has mushrooms or avocado.

pizza

You can combine almost anything you want. If you've never made a pizza at home before, I recommend it highly, it's quick and easy and fun! I always use a store-bought base, or sometimes pita bread.

ingredients
pizza base (if you're buying, check it doesn't contain animal products, sometimes it does)
tomato paste
one or two cloves of garlic (minced)
oregano
olive oil
things that might be delicious, such as mushrooms, pumpkin, sun-dried tomatoes.

method
Spread the tomato paste and the garlic across the pizza base. Shake out oregano and any other appropriate herbs, then layer delicious things. Drizzle with olive oil or balsamic vinegar, and bake on 180C for about 15 minutes.

NOM.

You will need to precook things like pumpkin and potato, anything that takes a very long time to bake. Things that wilt easily, like spinach, can be added for the entire cooking time, for half the cooking time, or raw at the end, depending on what you prefer.

pizza topping combinations I really enjoy
pumpkin, spinach, avocado
sweet potato (sliced thinly), artichoke and pinenuts, with some rosemary
sun-dried tomato, roma tomato, mushrooms, avocado and spinach


Please feel free to comment with your own favourites! Think of it as a service to all pizza-loving vegans.