This is a whole other class of pizza people.
Seriously, just drink that in for a few more seconds.
Okay I’m done blowing my own horn, down to business. I’ve blogged about socca pizza before, but the original version, while delicious, isn’t one of the healthiest dishes in my repertoire. Sure, it’s a world away from traditional pizza, but it’s still laden with copious amounts of vegan cheese and sauteed toppings.
This on the other hand is light but filling and immensely flavourful. The combination of spinach, dried herbs and fresh basil makes for the most deliciously fragrant crust – plus how pretty is that green?
Beet, Hummus and Avocado Green Socca Pizza
(Soy and GF)
Serves 1
For the socca crust:
- 1/2 cup gram flour (chickpea/garbanzo bean flour)
- 1/4-1/2 cup of water
- 1 large handful of spinach
- 1/4 fresh basil
- 1 tsp oregano or herbs de provence
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
For the toppings:
- 1/4 cup homemade hummus of choice
- 1 medium cooked beet – thinly sliced
- 1/2 a small avocado – thinly sliced
- Red onion slices
- Parsley, black pepper and fresh basil to top (optional)
- In a blender or food processor, add all the socca ingredients and half the water then blend. Add the rest of the water in a thin stream or gradually to thin out as needed. you’re looking for a noticably thick batter – not as watery as regular socca.
- Heat some cooking oil in a pan over a medium flame, then pour in the batter and allow the edges to set before transferring to your grill (broiler) or oven. Cook for approximately 4 minutes, then flip and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes or until edges are crispy but the centre is tender. My oven/grill cook things miraculously fast so I’m always bad at estimating bake times – use your chef’s intuition.
- Allow to cool for a couple of minutes then smother with toppings. Hummus, beets, avocado, fresh herbs and red onions were my picks but feel free to customise this to your heart’s content.
Served alongside a simple yet flavoursome salad of carrots, raisins and walnuts in a cinnamon balsamic dressing.
If you’re not a fan of beets (crazy?) tomatoes would work equally well here. And olives. And artichoke hearts.
I might just have to make this again tonight. Not sure why I say that like it’s a bad thing – because it really isn’t. Seriously I implore you to make this (and you know I mean business because that’s not a word I use often), you won’t be sorry.
One of my friends recently told me that she’d happily “eat the way I do” if the ingredients weren’t so hard to find, so in her honour I’ve made it my mission to use more easily found ingredients in my recipes – expect a lot more hurry-up vegan s tyle posts.
A quick run-down of the above ingredients and you will note that there is not a chia seed in sight:
Chickpea/gram/besan flour – widely available in most supermarkets (Bahraini readers – this is also called Kabab flour) as well as Indian/ethnic foods markets.
The rest (spinach, basil, herbs etc.) are typical run of the mill ingredients, and feel free to use packaged, restaurant bought or canned(shudder) hummus if need be.
Now how’s that for an accesible, healthy and most importantly delicious vegan pizza?
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