recipe: cauliflower pizza crust

Filters make everything prettier.

Happy Friday, friends. Growing up in my house, Friday night meant one thing: pizza. Well, two things, pizza and X-FILES. Since my ardent desire to see David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson make out in real life is as yet unfulfilled, I present to you instead a pizza recipe.

But not just any pizza recipe! This one has a crust made of cauliflower! "What?!" you might say. "You are Italian, is this not blasphemous?" Well, in short, yes. But a girlfriend has got to cut carbs somehow, amirite?

I came across this recipe thanks to my lovely, blogging friend Jenny. You can find the original recipe for the crust here, also.

cauliflower pizza crust (and pizza toppings)

ingredients 1 head of cauliflower 1/2 cup of grated parm (note, shredded won't work as well) 1/2 cup of freshly grated mozzarella (I recommend full fat because, obviously) 1 egg, beaten 1 teaspoon of seasonings (I  used my personal favorite mix: Awesome WOW! I swear that is the real name) 3 cloves minced garlic (or more, we like our garlic) 1/2 teaspoon of salt (optional)

directions

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Chop the cauliflower in small bits and blitz in the food processor. It should look like rice when you're through.

"Riced" cauliflower

Zap the cauliflower in the microwave for about 5-8 minutes, until cooked. If there is any liquid, drain it using either a cheesecloth or a fine mesh sieve. Mine didn't have any water, which was weird, but whatever.

Take 1 cup of your cooked, riced cauliflower and add to a bowl with all of your other ingredients. Stir well. (Save the rest of your cauliflower to make more pizzas or make into a mash or fritters ... the possibilities are endless!)

Mix mix mix. What a bad picture this is.

Spray a cookie sheet with non-stick spray and then pat down your crust mix onto the pan. Make sure it is even and not too thin.

Cook your crust for 15 minutes. It should look kind of like matzoh (according to Mike) when it's done. Let sit for a minute or two, make sure it isn't sticking to the cookie sheet, and then add your toppings.

Cooked crust eager for toppings.

On our pizza, we used tomato sauce, mozz, sausage, caramelized onion, and basil. Mostly everything came from the Union Square farmer's market, so yay for supporting local people.

Ready to be baked.

Depending on what you put on top, it should only need about 3-5 minutes in the oven. Try not to overload it too much because the crust won't be as sturdy as one made of bread.

Now please note that this won't taste like pizza crust, but it is delicious. You can't really go wrong with cauliflower and cheese and seasonings, no?

Let cool for a minute or two and then dig in! Let me know what you think.