Novelties: Veggie Pizza with Portobello Mushroom Crust

This was one of my more inventive ideas - along with Venergy Drinks, coming soon. I still think it is theoretically possible to pull this off, but I'm not convinced the effort is worth it, since you can cut the stem off a portobello to make a mini-pizza anyway.

The basic idea, though, was to make a pizza crust without using dough. I've played around with roasted portobello mushroom dishes and decided that if I threw some mushrooms in my food processor and added some oil, I could make a crust. I threw in a few cloves of garlic, because why not get that in the "crust" directly if you can?

Ingredients:
2-3 portobello mushrooms
2-3 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup (maybe? Eyeball it) olive oil
1/2 cup tomato sauce, or canned diced tomatoes with basil and oregano
diced veggies/toppings of your choice
cheese of choice - enough to cover

Then the toppings are just like a basic pizza. You could theoretically do whatever you want.

I baked it for over an hour at 350 degrees. The "crust" never cohered, and burned a little around the edges. Although you couldn't eat it like a pizza, which was my main goal, it still tasted pretty good.

I'm thinking an egg or something else with emulsifiers might work better to bind it if I try it again. I may try to make the crust thinner, too. Pre-cooking or drying the crust may help as well.

Fun with Food Processors 1: Sun-Dried Tomato Tapenade

Tapenade is a French word for "delicious on bread." Typically its made with olives. This recipe adds sun dried tomatoes because it's cool like that.

Ingredients:
Olives
Olive oil
Garlic
Sun dried tomatoes
Lime juice (optional)
Paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

You can probably do this in a blender but I recommend a food processor instead. If you're not sure about the operation, just remember that ingredients go inside the food processor, and body parts stay outside.

I haven't put in measurements because I usually eyeball it. I go for a roughly 1:1 ratio of olives to sun dried tomatoes. I recommend draining the olives first so that the salt from the brine doesn't ruin it - something I've learned from experience.

You can pick your poison as far as the olives are concerned - I've used kalamata, Spanish, and black, but the olives should be a secondary taste to the tomatoes. And the garlic. Mmmm, garlic.

If your tomatoes came in a jar with oil in it, you can use some of that oil in the recipe. If they are dry (like mine were, above), you will need to either add some water or some olive oil to get the consistency right. I'm not sure about the lime juice, but I had some around last time I made it and figured it might fill out the flavor some. It'd be fine without, though, so if you're skittish, you can omit it.

Aside from being amazing on bread, you can also use it in wraps or with eggs. It's amazing with bread, though.