Well, whaddya know, it’s the weekend again, and that means it’s time for another pizza. Seafood pizza was Mr Thrifty’s favourite in his pre-vegan days, and in the freezer resided just the product to create a vegan version of that old favourite.
The key ingredient is an awesome vegetarian shrimp product found at Chinese supermarket Wai Yee Hong (they have an online store, but it doesn’t appear they sell their frozen products online… sorry). It is waaaay better than other veggie shrimp products I’ve tried… it not only looks and tastes like shrimp, it has a texture very close to ‘real’ shrimp. In fact, the first time we tried it, Mr Thrifty asked me to double-check the packaging to make sure it was vegetarian.
Anyhoo, I had a few bits and bobs of veggies laying around, and they were added to create what turned out to be a fantastic pizza that made us wish we’d been total pigs and made two pizzas. We used Redwood Cheezly’s super-melting Mozzarella to give it that cheesy goodness that pizza really must have.
**For the crust and sauce, see Vegan ham & pineapple (& mushroom) pizza.**
| British | American | |||
| For the topping | (enough for one pizza) | |||
| 4-1/2 teaspoons | olive oil | 4-1/2 teaspoons | ||
| 100g | sweet peppers, in 1cm (3/8″) dice | 2/3 cup | ||
| 70g | courgette (zucchini), in 1cm (3/8″) dice | 1/2 cup | ||
| 30g | finely chopped onion | 1/4 cup | ||
| 110g | veggie shrimp, halved lengthwise and crosswise | 4 ounces | ||
| 6 | fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces | 6 | ||
| 130g | fresh tomatoes, in 1cm (3/8″ dice) | 2/3 cup | ||
| 95g | vegan cheese, “melty” type | 3-1/2 ounces |
1. Make crust and sauce as per Vegan ham & pineapple (& mushroom) pizza. If you have a pizza crust in the freezer, prepare the toppings first before taking crust from the freezer.
2. Heat one teaspoon olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat and saute sweet peppers, until slightly softened, about two minutes. Remove from skillet, then repeat with an additional teaspoon of oil and the courgette (zucchini); and again with the onion and then the veggie shrimp. Set vegetables and shrimp aside.
3. Preheat oven to 200C (400F). Position rack about 19cm (7″) from the top of the oven.
4. Assemble pizza. If using a frozen crust, remove from freezer. Spread sauce evenly onto crust, leaving a 2.5cm (one inch) border all around. Brush the edge with 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil. Top with fresh basil, then grate cheese over top. Arrange sweet pepper, courgette (zucchini), onion, shrimp and fresh tomato on pizza.
5. Place a strip of foil along the back edge of the pizza as a precaution against burning.
6. Bake for 20-30 minutes, rotating half way through, until crust is golden and crispy and cheese has melted.
What can I say? This pizza was awesome.
Makes two servings.
YUMMMM!!!!!
I used to love shrimp on pizza!
I have a life-threatening seafood allergy and always was curious to try shrimp. Does this contain any actual seafood ingredients at all (i.e. seaweed)? If you say this tastes like the real thing, I’d like to try it. I just wanna know that it is safe. I realize this was posted in 2008 but still. 🙂
Hi J — If you click on the small image of the product, you can see the ingredients. One of them is “natural flavour”… and it is probably seaweed-based, because the “shrimp” have the flavour of seaweed. So if you can’t have seaweed, you are best to avoid this product, IMO.
But seaweed is vegan.