Oven-Roasted Vegetable Naan Pizza with Tikka Masala

We received some interesting feedback the other day about our recipes, so y'all, keep the suggestions coming! The heartfelt words of a person who wished to remain anonymous persuaded us to feature some recipes with ingredients that can be easily sourced at places like Aldi, recipes that don't rely too heavily on specialized equipment that not everyone has. 

So, Anonymous, know that we hear you! :) Now we dare you to make this dish because we think you'll absolutely LOVE it. 

The very serious words 'mission statement' are especially hilarious when applied to a vegetarian food blog, but hey, here goes. We love to cook, and we want to change the way vegetarian dishes are perceived.  Our main goals are to renew longtime vegetarians' interest in home cooking and to make people who scoff at vegetarian food fall in love with it. We'll do just about anything to show how nutritious food can actually be good and 
craveable, too. We're all about creativity and learning new things, and we want more people to look forward to participating in Meatless Mondays and skipping meat at least some of the time. This might just make all of us better as a whole in terms of health, and it could help our environment a great deal now and in the future. 

Cooking at home means everything to us. We invest in tools that will help us hone our technique and share tips with y'all, and we seek out the best ingredients because that's a surefire way to make food taste unbelievably great. We still love the crunchy old veg favorites that we grew up enjoying, but now we want to be a part of how vegetarian food evolves and gets the spotlight it deserves. 

Anyway, so this post is not sponsored by Aldi, but upon our reader's advice, we stopped by the Summer Avenue location in Memphis last Saturday with the intention of seeing what ingredients were available and then creating a couple of new TCV recipes based on what we found. 

(Some fresh finds from Aldi)

We love what we were able to put together! The tikka masala that's used as the sauce for this pizza is from a jar, it's a product that's new at Aldi, and it's really good. We also found gluten-free items, lots of fresh produce, honey goat cheese, hemp seeds, marcona almonds, and all sorts of other awesome stuff at good prices there. 

Our box of ingredients (for 2 recipes for an entrée and a dessert that'll serve 4 to 6 people) rang up for around $30. We'll certainly be going back to Aldi to shop, and we welcome more advice about other places you'd like to see us try. 

Oh, and now we can't wait to show you the pretty spring dessert we've been working on developing with products from the same shopping trip…a bunch of nectarines are almost ripe and ready to hit the grill. 

Oven-Roasted Vegetable Naan Pizza with Tikka Masala

Oven-Roasted Vegetables (recipe follows)
4 naan flatbreads1 16 ounce jar tikka masala "simmer sauce" (like Journey to India brand)
8 to 10 ounce block of white cheddar cheese (shredded)
5 green onions (chopped, about 1 cup)
1 small bunch cilantro (large stems discarded)

Make the Oven-Roasted Vegetables according to the recipe below. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place naan flatbreads directly on the oven rack for 5 minutes in order to crisp them up. 

On two large parchment-lined baking sheets, arrange the warm naan flatbreads and get ready to dress them. Onto each flatbread, add about 1/4 cup of tikka masala and spread it almost to the edges. Arrange a variety of Oven-Roasted Vegetables in a single layer on top of the sauce. Top that with about 2 ounces of shredded white cheddar. Repeat for each flat bread. Place the baking sheet with the prepared flatbreads into the oven for 10 minutes or until the cheese has melted to your liking. Upon removing the flatbreads from the oven, sprinkle the top of each with green onions and 5 to 7 springs of cilantro. Cut each flatbread into quarters. Serve hot. (Makes 4 to 6 servings.) 

Oven-Roasted Vegetables 

8 ounces mushrooms (sliced)
1 medium eggplant (about 4 cups, sliced and quartered)
1 pound multicolored mini bell peppers (about 4 cups sliced)
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, toss mushrooms, eggplant, peppers, salt, and olive oil until salt and oil are evenly distributed. On a large parchment-lined baking sheet, spread the vegetables out into a single layer. Some overlap is fine. Place baking sheet into the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the baking sheet, stir the vegetables around and distribute them into a single layer. Place the baking sheet back into the oven for an additional 5 minutes. Remove and allow to cool until ready to use. Store any leftover vegetables in an airtight container in the fridge for one week or freeze. (Makes 4 to 6 servings.)