As promised, here is what I made with yesterday’s Thrive Diet raw sauces: pizza! Kind of. Brendan Brazier himself says he uses the term “pizza” loosely. It has a base, sauce, and toppings, but the similarities end there. The crust isn’t firm or crispy, and you’ll need a plate and fork to eat it—to me, it’s more of a flat casserole. Whatever you want to call it, it’s highly inventive and unexpectedly yummy.
For the crust:
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 cup cooked black-eyed peas (1/2 can)
1/2 cup chickpea flour (or whole wheat)
1/4 cup coconut oil or hemp oil
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
Sea salt to taste
Sun-dried tomato marinara
Sweet pepper hemp pesto
For the topping:
2 carrots, peeled and grated
1 cup cooked black-eyed peas (other 1/2 can)
1 red bell pepper, sliced or diced
1/2 medium onion, diced
1/2 medium sweet potato, grated
4 green onions, minced
1 tsp crushed red pepper
2T sunflower seeds
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a food processor, combine all crust ingredients.
Process until the mixture starts to ball up.
Lightly grease a 10×15-inch baking pan with coconut oil (or cooking spray). Spread the mixture across the entire pan, about 1/4-inch thick. Spread about one cup of the sun-dried tomato marinara across the crust.
Evenly sprinkle on all topping ingredients.
Bake for 45-50 minutes. Let cool for 5-10 minutes before cutting.
Top each piece with a drizzle of the sweet pepper hemp pesto, sprinkle with sunflower seeds, and serve. Even though the pizza is huge, it’s quite thin, so you’ll easily be able to polish off 1/4 of it at a time. I love the salty-savory black-eyed pea and quinoa crust, and it was perfectly complemented by the sweet sauces. Use whatever veggies you want on top (I strayed pretty far from the original recipe’s toppings), but I particularly recommend including the grated sweet potato. This thing is packed with nutrition, from healthy fats to soluble fiber to plant protein. The initial prep work was a little time-consuming, but worth it. I just lent the book to a friend, but when I get it back, I plan to try some of Brendan’s other pizza recipes as well.
Yield: 4 servings. Per serving: 492 calories, 26.2g fat (8g sat), 52.6g carbs, 11g fiber, 15.8g protein.
That looks tasty!
That looks awesome!
Though it’s not really my thing, it does look rather interesting, in a good way.
Thanks, guys! I know it’s pretty “out there,” but I was very pleasantly surprised at how tasty it turned out to be.
Looks good to me! I think to facilitate a crispier crust I’d try baking the quinoa layer first a few minute before adding the rest of the toppings. For personal preference, I’d probably do lentils instead of black-eyed peas (since I can’t stand black-eyed peas!).
You’ve inspired me to create my own food blog. People get sick of me talking about all the things I make over on Facebook (haha).
Lentils would be yummy too, good call.
You should! Then we can be food blog buddies and I’ll link to you and you’ll link to me and together we’ll inspire legions of culinary followers…or at the very least, we’ll just read each other’s!
This is my favorite recipe so far. Keep up the good work Amber!!
I just made this for dinner and i’m waiting for it to be done. I am excited !!! I like your blog…I have very similar eating styles, except i like salads!!
keep it up!
I just made one and I thought maybe it didn’t come out right so I’m totally glad you posted this with photos! Yes, it was indeed more like a flat casserole. I liked it! Next time, I’ll spread it all out more so that it cooks more evenly–we piled a lot of the toppings on so it probably could have cooked longer. I’d like to try cooking the crust separately so see if it comes out crispier. Will definitely try it again.
Parbaking the crust a little bit on its own is a great idea!
Im making this Sunday night!
Cool! Hope you like it.