Feeling the Valentine's food fear with a bit of pizza

OK, so I'm a bit late to the whole Valentine's posting thing. Still love is universal, and you don't need a special day to remember that you like someone.

Which is just a long-winded, romantic way of saying I was too busy to put this up earlier. 

When me and my other half were just getting together, it was a good few years ago and we were a lot younger and a lot more poorly paid than we are now. He'd turn up at my door with a margharita pizza (he ate meat then, and I was yet to go vegan. Yeah, it was that long ago) and the cheapest, nastiest bottle of soave wine he could find. Why always soave? A puzzle whose answer is lost to the mists of time. I can only assume it was on special offer at the local supermarket. A lot. 

Anyway, this Valentine's we decided to give the whole pizza and soave thing a go again. 

Only, as I've mentioned before, I don't really like pizza. But maybe, just maybe, I thought, if I made it myself, it would actually be alright - there'd be vegan cheese and all the vegetably toppings I'd need to forgive pizza its past sins. I'd never made pizza before - it always seemed a bit too involved, and with too many moving parts to go wrong in the hands of cackhanded baker. Also, I really, really didn't like pizza. Did I mention that? Really didn't like it. Like, Jeremy Clarkson covered in spiders and meat didn't like it.

But, it was Valentine's day - more food fear to be dealt with. We made the dough together (he under duress) and cooked up the pizza sauce with tinned tomatoes, oregano, thyme, sugar, bay leaves and some fried onions and garlic. 

The toppings were more caramelised onions, jarred roasted peppers, and some Japanese aubergines from dinner the other day. (Pretty sure that make this dinner some fancy-assed Fusion food right there. Or just a bit of a culinary car crash. You decide.)

For the cheese, I roped in the ever-reliable, ever-amazing cashew queso from PPK.

Here's the end result:

Excuse the bad lighting and bad photography, but that was the only bad part of this.

Doctor, I'm cured! No more pizza phobia in this corner. It was fluffy dough, creamy cheese, and vegetables. If that's wrong, I'm not being right.

And then there was some garlic bread slices from Jus-Rol which were none too shabby either.  (Jus-Rol  do a lot of accidentally vegan stuff, and more power to their elbow for it.

It was a good pizza and soave dinner all around. You can't see soave there, you say? You may have a point. After turning pizza from frog to prince in my mind, I didn't want to chance my arm to find out if soave had become less rancid over the last few years. There's only so many unexpected transformations you can expect on one day...