African Pineapple Kale Pizza

One of my favorite go to recipes that’s simple, quick and sure to satisfy vegans, vegetarians and omnivores is African Pineapple Peanut Stew from Fatfree Vegan. I have made this so many times over the past few years that its really become one of my favorites.

The other day I was committed to making pizza for dinner.  One quick loop around my small winter farmers looking for inspiration and I ended up grabbing sweet potatoes,  onions and a large bunch of perfect kale and with that my wild idea of combining African Pineapple Peanut Stew and pizza was born.

I chose to make my own pizza dough but that is totally optional.  You can easily find good store bought dough in almost any grocery store these days.  Also, its good to note that sometimes your local pizza place might be willing to sell you a dough so its always worth asking.

For the dough I used a basic pizza dough recipe from Mark Bittman but you can use any basic pizza dough recipe. I mostly gravitate to using wheat pizza crusts but I really felt like I wanted a basic white crust to hold up the mountain of kale I had planned for it.

For the dough:

In addition to your prepared dough you will need flour for dusting and rolling and cornmeal.

For the sauce:

1 large sweet potato (baked)

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 salt

pepper taste

For the topping:

1 or 2 bunches of kale (about 1 pound)

1 can (20 ozs) pinapple chunks

2 gloves garlic (chopped)

1 medium yellow onion (diced)

1 teaspoon cider vinegar

1/2 cup all natural peanut butter- use your favorite kind. I used all natural salted chunky.

1 jalapeno pepper

For the  garlic hemp seed “cheese” sauce:

1/3 cup raw hulled hemp seeds

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

2 teaspoons cider vinegar

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 425º F.

Bake your sweet potato until tender (45 to 60 mins depending on size). While the sweet potato is cooking make the pizza dough and set aside to rise.

Wash and remove stems,chop your kale into bite size pieces.

Heat a pan on over medium high heat.  Cook onion about 5 minutes, add garlic and cook another couple of minuets.  Add kale and cook for another couple of minutes then add 1 cup of the pineapple juice and the cider vinegar, cover and steam the kale for about 5-7 minutes. You want to slightly undertook the kale. Stir in the peanut butter and mix well.

Once the sweet potato is cooked, remove from the oven. Set a pizza stone on a middle rack in the oven and turn the heat up to 500 F.

Remove the skin from the bakes sweet potato. Mash or blend your sweet potato into a puree and add, onion powder,  garlic powder and salt and pepper to taste.

Roll out your dough using flour to prevent sticking.  Roll out to about 14 to 16 inches, you really don’t want a thin crust with this one. Liberally dust a pizza peel (you can also use a flat cookie sheet or an upside down cookie sheet). Top the dough with sweet potato puree, cooked peanut butter kale mix,  pineapple chunks and chopped jalapeno.

To make the garlic cheese sauce simply blend all ingredients (hemp seeds, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, nutritional yeast and cider vinegar) together until smooth

Bake pizza at 500 degrees until crust is cooked 12-15 mins. Once the pizza is removed from the oven add garlic hemp cheese sauce in dollops around the pizza.