Tea and Sympatico

When I popped into V Revolution the other day the guys there were raving about the new Violife for pizza hard block of vegan cheese. On their recommendation I decided to try it out and I have to say I was impressed. It's also the cheapest vegan cheese I've come across at £2.25 a block. It melted really well and had a pleasant taste. I used most of it on a Cheatin Ham and Pineapple pizza. I blogged a while ago about my forays into pizza making and I've progressed even further to using 00 flour and getting my bases nice and thin. I've been using this recipe which does most of the work in a food processor. We had enough of the cheese left over to try it with beans on toast and to mix in with mushrooms and pesto in a pasta dish. Whilst I don't eat masses of vegan cheese I'll definitely buy this brand again and look forward to trying it in a cheese and tomato toasted sandwich.

I sit opposite someone at work who makes pizza every Friday. He made some lovely pizza for our Christmas work buffet including a vegan one and it's got me interested in making pizza again. I've now got two things to help me on my pizza journey.  The first is a pizza stone. These vary in price but Matt found me one for a tenner in TK Maxx and we've been impressed with it. The other thing is a copy of  Vegan Pizza by Julie Hassan.  For my first attempts I used this very quick and easy pizza base recipe from the BBC website but I'm looking forward to trying some of the different base recipes from the book. The pizza in the picture below has a cheezy cashew sauce from the book which was lovely. I'm pleased to see that Pizza Express have listened to demand and finally launched a vegan pizza. I've yet to try the new Pianta Pizza but it sounds good! Has anyone tried it yet and was the arrabiata sauce very spicy? I tend to avoid chillies so I may need to ...