What We Ate Wednesday—Pizza Soup and Garlic Cheese Bread

Hello lovelies! This week’s recipes were happy accidents.

My friend Emma and I went to the FREE Book Shop (seriously, it’s totally free! It’s like a charity shop, but free! You are allowed three second hand books per day. Did I mention they are completely FREE?) It’s run by volunteers and their goal is to keep books out of landfills and to promote reuse and recycling. It’s amazing.

So, Emma and I went and one of the three free books I got was a cookbook for vegetarians on a student budget. Many of the recipes for vegan, so I decided to take it home.

In there, they had a recipe for tomato and red lentil soup which looked good, but it had no herbs or spices. I decided to use their basic recipe and add pizza spices and it was a huge success.

I was just going to make some of my 5 minute flatbread  with garlic butter on top, but then remembered I had some Quick and Dirty Cheese Sauce adapted from HERE  in the fridge leftover from when we had pizza and I thought I’d substitute cheese sauce for the yogurt and see what happened.

What happened was the bread was AMAZING.

The picture does not do it justice.

This comes together really quickly if you have the cheese sauce made in advance. It needs to be cold, so do your cheese ahead of time and you can make this in about 30 minutes.

Pizza Soup and Garlic Cheese Bread

Make your cheese sauce:

1 TB vegan butter

6 TB nutritional yeast flakes

1 TB flour (I used rice flour)

¾ cup non dairy milk

¼ tsp each garlic powder and onion powder

½ tsp salt

Pepper

Shake of turmeric and smoked paprika for colour

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan. While it is melting whisk everything else together in a small jug. When butter is melted, slowly stream in milk mixture, whisking constantly until heated and thickened. Let cool and refrigerate.

The soup:

1 chopped onion

1 grated carrot

Garlic to taste

Half a chopped pepper

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 TB tomato puree (paste)

50g (1/3 cup) red lentils, rinsed and picked over

400ml vegetable stock

Pinch salt

Pinch sugar

1 tsp each basil and oregano

3 TB nutritional yeast flakes

Cook the onion, carrot, pepper and garlic in a splash of oil or water until softened then add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 25 minutes. 

When cooked, puree smooth with an immersion blender.

Meanwhile, make the cheese bread.

Cheese Bread

Move your oven rack up close to the top. Preheat your grill/broiler. I set my temperature to 220C/425F.

Line a pan with parchment paper.

In a small sauce pan melt 1 heaping TB of vegan butter and a clove of crushed garlic.

In a bowl sift together:

200g (1.5 cups) gluten free flour mix or regular flour

3 tsp baking powder

½  tsp xanthan gum (only if using GF flour)

½ tsp salt to taste

Then add:

2/3 cup cold cheese sauce

¼ cup water

Keep adding water a TB at a time until the flour is no longer wet. It took considerably more 

water than when I make it with yogurt. Don’t panic, just keep adding and stirring. This will eventually result in a rather sticky dough.

Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces using wet hands and form circular patties with your hands approx. 5mm thick. Or do what I did and make 5 breadstick shapes.

Brush with the garlic butter you melted a minute ago, and top with a pinch of flaked sea salt.

Grill/broil for approx. 3-5 minutes on each side (depending on the strength of your grill) until lightly golden and puffed up. I always do 5 minutes per side. Don’t forget to brush with garlic butter when you flip.

It is amazing how this puffs up under the grill and goes all crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and golden brown and yum. The cheese flavour was really strong, and the garlic butter gave it a WOW factor.

We will definitely have this again. It made 3 bowls and the soup recipe could be easily doubled if serving a crowd.. 

But there won't be enough cheese bread, because I will have eaten it all myself. Sorry!