​Step away from the pepperoni. Here there be vegetables—but how to handle them for dazzling homemade pizzas?

​Yes, the most popular pizza nationwide is pepperoni. But one day, it will happen.

You’ll be hosting a pizza night, and you’ll have to step away from the pepperoni because you’ve done the unthinkable: invited a vegetarian to your dinner table.
 
This is so not a problem, especially with pizza. It just requires that you pack away your pork-product love for an evening and figure out how to walk without your cured-meat crutch. And it helps to start thinking about the flavors a meat lover really loves about meat, and how can you possibly replicate that—or distract from it entirely.
 
​What to do?

To borrow the Peter Reinhart pizza maxim that “The only flavor rule is that flavor rules,” you just have to think about the best way to get that meaty flavor punch from ingredients that you don’t normally love—but ought to.
 
(This is all part of acquiring The Pizza Farm mentality that will eventually invade your life when you begin making too much pizza. Pizza Farm is all about building a better pie with purpose and intent and an eye towards the farm. More on that in another conversation.)
 
To illustrate how this exercise works, I will share my own mental processes, however questionable. 
 
My first question to the invited vegetarian was, “OK, so no meat. Do you ever go pescetarian?”
 
“No.”
 
Well then, no falling back on the old shrimp & garlic crutch.
 
My first thought was to employ the true umami monster of the vegetable world: The Mushroom.
 
And just by the way, if you don’t like mushrooms, or you don’t really think about them, I recommend looking further into them. They’re fascinating.
 
And not just as a food. As a living thing, mushrooms have a secret life that boggles the mind. (Yes, aside from psilocybin, thank you very much.)
 
To quote one reviewer on Amazon about the documentary Fantastic Fungi, “This film is about connections between mushrooms and their symbiotic relationships to…just about everything. Including us. Shrooms reach out underground through their mycelium to form connections that benefit them and other organisms.”
 
I was never a big fan of mushrooms. Then, one day I made a sausage and mushroom pizza that made me say, “Holy baby bellas, I’d pay money for this.”
 
Since then, I’ve been becoming ever more pro-mushroom—even though I still have some reservations about them. There remains a reptile part of my brain that identifies them as an enemy. So I have a conflicted relationship with mushrooms. It’s complicated.
 
Nonetheless, there are often mushrooms around my pizza.
 
And in the case of our vegetarian pizza night, my first thought about meat alternatives was: Bacon.
 
And no, this is not a cynical nod to the “all vegans eat bacon” crowd. This is about the ability to substitute fried mushrooms for bacon.
 
I wondered if a well-fried mushroom could stand in for the crispy, salty delight of pork’s gift to humanity.
 
Chef Google says yes.

But there’s a catch.
 
When you fry the mushroom slices, do NOT use salt. Salt the mushrooms after cooking.
 
If you salt the mushrooms while they’re frying, the salt draws out the water. You end up trying to fry mushrooms in too much H20, and they will not crisp up.
 
OK, number one challenge solved.
 
We’re going to a do a mock-bacon version of my regular bacon and spinach pizza. It’s a red-sauce pizza with low-moisture mozzarella, Pecorino Romano, bacon and chopped spinach.
 
Yes, this is an experiment. But I’m willing to test it out in front of a live audience.
 
(I have new respect for bringing untested material to the masses after watching the hilarious Albert Brooks documentary, Defending My Life. If Brooks could take brand-new, never-before tested material onto the stage in front of the Tonight Show audience for broadcast nationwide to millions, I can serve a new pizza with risk of failure in front of a few friends.)
 
Next up, I considered what is a widely loved plant protein: Nuts!
 
If you don’t know nuts on pizza, you need to get out more. There are MANY pizzas with nuts.
 
One of most famous is Chris Bianco’s highly celebrated pizza at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix: the Pizza Rosa. It’s a white pizza with Arizona pistachios, red onion and rosemary.
 
Pizza with walnuts and peaches or walnuts and stinky cheese like Roquefort are a fave in gourmet pizza circles. And while I do not box in that particular ring, I do enjoy taking tips from it.
 
So anyway, nuts are happening.
 
But which nuts?
 
I do have some cashews on hand. And Chef Google reveals an unlikely place for the cashew pizza as a milestone: California’s Inland Empire. Specifically, Redlands.
 
We’re talking a hot, dry, dusty place near San Bernardino , California. High desert, baby. Trailer living. Meth problems. The Marine Corps Air Combat Ground Center. Semi-trucks passing through. Temps over 100 in August with potential for low teens in January.  
 
There used to be a dive in Redlands called Dirty Dave’s Infamous Gay ‘90s Pizza Parlor. One day, a besotted regular (whose name remains a mystery) came up to the bar and ordered a pepperoni and sausage pizza with onion, and a bag of cashews.
 
When the pizza arrived, the drunken gent ripped open the bag of cashews and poured them all over his pizza.
 
Dirty Dave was watching this, and allegedly grabbed a slice of the pizza to take a bite.
 
It wasn’t long before cashew pizza was on the menu. And while Dirty Dave’s is long gone from Redlands, the cashew pizza remains a staple menu item around California’s Inland Empire.
 
TRIVIA: The cashew is not a true nut. It’s a fruit pit, the edible seed from the “false fruit” of the evergreen Anacardium occidentale. Wow. That’s a lot to unpack. Another job for some other time.
 
So, taking a cue from Chris Bianco, I’m thinking red onion and garlic—but on a red-sauce pizza, perhaps. Having dabbled with nuts on pizza (that sounds wrong), including fresh local pecans, I think roasted, salted and crushed cashews might be the way to go, yielding more flavor and some crunch on a more composed pizza.
 
And finally, I want to make the pizza that distracts the meat lover from the fact it has no meat: the Garden Gone Wild pizza.
 
This is such a fresh flavor bomb that even the crustiest of carnivores will eat and enjoy.
 
Garden Gone Wild is a red sauce pizza with both low-moisture mozzarella and fresh mozzarella pearls, as well as Parmigiano Reggiano. In addition to a tomato-based pizza sauce, there are halved grape tomatoes, small bits of broccoli florets, sliced leek whites, chopped scallions, fresh oregano, and a garnish of fresh basil chiffonade.
 
It’s almost like a chopped salad cooked onto a pizza.
 
And yes, there is an opportunity to add meat should you desire. I like using small chunks of Spanish chorizo. I’d also consider bits of Italian sausage.
 
One of the keys here for me is a) making sure all the toppings are small, same-sized chunks, and b) being judicious with quantity and placement.
 
This pizza has the potential for being wet. So I brush the stretched dough with a moisture-repellent layer of olive oil before applying the sauce, and make sure the veggie pieces are small and uniform so they cook evenly with minimal moisture release.
 
So, how is this vegetarian pizza night going to go? Quite well, I hope. I’ll let you know—especially if anyone says, “Man, that was good—but I miss the MEAT!”
 
Happy Labor Day Weekend!

P.S. Why no recipes? You must be new here. Welcome! No recipes because pizza is less about recipes and more about practice. In this regard, giving you practical, codified recipes is almost impossible. I don't know your style of pizza, the size of your pies, your general preferences, or really anything practical about what you're doing. But you do. You know your pizza far better than I do, even if you're a newbie. Just go with the idea that less is more, and give it a shot. You'll know far better than I if you're doing it right. Even if you fall on your face, the pizza will still taste pretty good. Eat your mistakes with relish, then make corrections for the next pizza. 
 
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