Assuming that you have your crusts in the dehydrator, the rest of this recipe is relatively simple! The raw tomato sauce that creates the platform for the rest of the ingredients needs to be dehydrated overnight so you can pop it in your dehydrator along with the crusts as you transport them from the teflex sheets to the mesh screens. You could potentially use the sauce un-dehydrated but something magical happens to it as it reduces in the dehydrator! It not only thickens but also intensifies in flavour. The cashews for the “cheese” need to be soaked for 4 hours prior to blending so plan accordingly.
Ingredients:
Special equipment: dehydrator and a food processor
- Prepared Sunflower Buckwheat pizza crusts (See Raw Market Pizza post for crust recipe)
- one recipe of Cashew cheese (recipe follows)
- one recipe of pizza sauce (recipe follows)
- fresh sliced tomatoes
- lots of fresh basil
- pitted kalamata olives
- fresh cracked pepper
- olive oil to drizzle
The Pizza Sauce:
- 400g of vine ripened tomatoes
- 1 red pepper, seeded and chopped
- 1/3 cup of nutritional yeast
- 1/8 cup of balsamic vinegar
- 1 large clove of peeled garlic, chopped
- a pinch of red pepper flakes
- 1/2 tbsp. crushed fennel seeds
- 1 tbsp. onion powder
- 1 tsp. dried oregano
- 11/2 tbsp. of himalayan pink salt
- 1 tbsp. smoked paprika
Place all of the ingredients except for the dried oregano into a high speed blender. Blend until smooth.
Stir in the oregano by hand. Pour the sauce into either a large shallow bowl or a shallow baking dish. Dehydrate 8-12 hours at 117 degrees F. When you remove the sauce from the dehydrator it will appear thickened and darker in colour.
Stir well. Set aside while you prepare the cashew cheese.
The Cashew Cheese:
- 11/2 cups of raw cashews, soaked in plenty of water for at least 4 hours
- 2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 tbsp. organic lemon zest
- 2 tbsp. nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp. pink himalayan salt
- 1 green onion, minced
- 1/4 cup of minced basil
- Drain and rinse the cashews. In a food processor combine the cashews, lemon juice, zest, yeast, and salt. Process until thick but smooth adding a tbsp. or two of water if you need to. If should have a similar texture to ricotta cheese. Stir in the minced green onion and basil by hand.
The final assembly:
Spread a generous amount of the pizza sauce onto your prepared crusts.
Arrange thinly sliced fresh tomatoes on top of the pizza sauce and then drop dollops of the cashew cheese onto the pizza to resemble big soft lumps of bocconcini! Artfully arrange fresh basil and pitted olives onto the crust. Top with plenty of fresh cracked pepper and a drizzle of good olive oil!
You can either eat the pizza right away cutting it carefully following the lines that you scored onto the crust prior to dehydrating or you can let it sit for an hour or so to allow the crust to soften a little.
