Vegan Italiano

Happy Monday... er... Tuesday?  Oops.  I guess I missed Meatless Monday.  Or rather, we're just getting to it a bit late.  Meatless Monday actually occurred on Monday this week, so the blog post is coming to you on Tuesday.

The Vegan and the Cheerleader came over for dinner, so I went in search of a recipe I could veganize.  I found it in my handy-dandy Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats.  Her calzone recipe is heavy heavy on cheese, so this was a great way to experiment with vegan cheese.  Jana asked what vegan cheese is made of.  Good question Jana!  Ours was made of rice:

Ummm... upside down rice?

Rachael called for pre-made dough, so I obviously took this as an excuse to make more Pioneer Woman dough.  It's an addiction.

I was pretty dismayed to find that Whole Foods doesn't carry vegan ricotta cheese, but soft tofu made an excellent substitution.  Apparently there are recipes to make vegan ricotta online, but that information came a little too late.

The recipe also calls for pesto.  I can't tell you how excited I was to use the basil I'd frozen from this summer.  It smelled amazing and made me hate this winter weather even more.  When making the pesto, I just left out the Parmesan cheese.  Since the pesto was then mixed together with the other ingredients, I don't think the missing Parm was a big deal.  I'm not sure it could have stood on its own though.

The calzones came out pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

Eat me.

We all agreed that you couldn't even tell they were vegan.

Jana loves calzones.

Oh Em.

"Cheesy", green, and good.

I may have played a bit of a trick on Drew and told him that I'd made him a special non-vegan calzone.  This was without a doubt a lie.

Mmmm... veg-a-rific!

Hot hot hot.

He really liked it.  I later told him it was vegan.  He made the comment that he'd like it even more if it was full of meat.  Next time I'll throw some meatballs in with his tofu.

Here's Rachael's original recipe with my veganization in pink. 

Spinach and Artichoke Calzones

Ingredients

• 2 balls of pizza dough (I used one recipe of P-Dub's dough)
• 1/3 cup toasted walnuts
• 1 15-ounce can artichoke hearts, drained & chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves
• Handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley (I used basil)
• 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (omitted)
• Coarse black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (omitted)
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 4-cups ricotta cheese (1 block soft tofu, drained and blended until smooth)
• 2 10-ounce boxes frozen chopped spinach, defrosted and wrung completely dry
• 1 10-ounce bag shredded Italian cheese blend (rice cheese!)
• Dab of EVOO to brush on the dough before baking (I forgot to do this.)

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
• Make the pesto by processing the nuts, garlic, parsley (basil), and Parm.
• In a large bowl combine the pesto and ricotta (tofu).  Add the spinach, pulling it apart as you add it to the bowl, then mix it and the artichokes through the ricotta and pesto.  Taste the filling and adjust the salt & pepper (if using tofu instead of ricotta, you will need to use significantly more s&p to up the flavor).
• Cut each ball of dough in half and with each half, dust your hands with flour, and form a 6- to 7-inch round crust.  Pile one fourth of the ricotta filling on half of the round dough.  Top with one fourth of the shredded cheese.  I topped it off with some red sauce too.  Fold the dough over and seal the edges.  Brush the calzone lightly with EVOO and place on a large cookie sheet.  Continue with the rest of the calzones. 
• Bake for 15 to 18 minutes , until evenly deep golden and crisp.  I think ours were bigger than Rachael's and I had to bake them for about 25 minutes.
• Enjoy!!!

Happy {meatless} Monday Tuesday!