If you’ve ever seen at least one episode of Bob Ross’ “Joy of Painting”, you know how beloved Bob Ross is. I absolutely loved watching his program, and he was so calm and lovely. And so last week, I decided to have my own Bob Ross moment with a bunch of vegetables.

For my canvas, I used a garlicky tofu-vegan cheese filling. Phyllo sheets were the base and the frame, of course. Then I started painting with the vegetables.

I put a happy little asparagus cabin on the right. Maybe a few broccolini trees on the left. Then I thought, how about a happy yellow sun right in the middle? And of course, let’s not forget a little path of olives to our cabin and a few sweet red pepper birds in the sky.

If you don’t want these vegetables, you can certainly make your own painting with other vegetables and shapes. All you need is a bit of creativity and a desire for fun! Enjoy your picture, ehm I mean pie!
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Ingredients:

Difficulty: Medium
(makes 1 pie, 20x30cm)

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

85 gr vegan butter
7 phyllo sheets (mine were about 36x50cm)
250 gr tofu, broken into small pieces
1 tsp salt, plus more to spread on top in the end
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp oat milk
150 gr grated vegan cheese

asparagus for the cabin
broccolini for trees
black olives for pathway
yellow bell pepper for the sun
sweet red pepper for birds

olive/vegetable oil to drizzle on top in the end

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Melt the butter and use a little bit of it to grease a 20×30 oven dish. Cut your vegetables and prepare your composition before.

2. Take a phyllo sheet. Brush with melted butter, and put the second sheet on top. Continue doing this for all the sheets. Do not brush the final seventh sheet with butter.

3. Put the phyllo sheets “glued” with melted butter on the oven dish and gently press to take the shape of the dish. Pinch the excess sheets on the edges to create a “frame”.

4. Put tofu, salt and garlic powder in a food processor and process until tofu is entirely broken.

5. Add two tbsp of oat milk to the tofu mixture and process again to create a paste.

6. Transfer the tofu paste into a bowl and add grated vegan cheese. Mix well.

7. Spread the tofu mixture into the phyllo pie base evenly and smoothen the surface with a spatula or just the back of a spoon.

8. Transfer your vegetable composition onto the pie filling. Push the veggies gently into the filling.

9. Brush the phyllo edges with the remaining melted butter. Spread a little salt on top and drizzle with olive or vegetable oil. Put in the medium part of the oven and bake for 22-25 minutes, until the phyllo edges are nicely browned and the vegetables are tender. After taking the pie out of the oven, let it cool for at least half an hour before transferring it to a wire rack. If your pie is delicate, you can also leave it in the pie dish. NOTE: The vegetables might get buried in the filling while baking. In this case, just move them on top of the filling using a knife right out of the oven. Enjoy!