Saturday, April 17, 2010

The Great Pizza Fiasco!

*I am currently experimenting with my foods & discovering the wonders of Cauliflower!  I even made a Faux Mashed Potatoes w/Cauliflower the other night!  Here is my latest & greatest attempt at creating something grand (and healthy) in the kitchen. Enjoy!


Okay, so I am definitely not the 'chef' of the family. That title belongs to my husband & I generally stay of his way as he does his magic & then I clean the dishes after!  However, I've been snooping through some recipes and finally became brave enough to attempt the INFAMOUS CAULIFLOWER PIZZA.  I SO should have captured this on video.

Imagine if you will, ME in the kitchen with half a head of cauliflower & a grater.  Can you hear the theme song to JAWS?  You would THINK that this is a simple task, but DON'T BE FOOLED!  I nearly scraped my fingerprints off!  After a long and arduous go at shredding the cauliflower into teeny tiny slivers (and most likely a few slices of MY flesh), I finally was able to add the cheese & spices to mix my soon to be pizza crust together. 

Then I prepared my sauce, my toppings (yellow pepper & canadian bacon) & made a beautiful, cannibal, cauliflower pizza & popped it in the oven and waited.  I checked the pizza 15 minutes later and it was soggy.  WHAT IN THE WORLD?  I checked it after another 10 minutes and it was STILL soft! 

What did I do wrong?  I re-read the directions and realized... I did NOT prebake my crust before adding the toppings!  UGH!  So, you live & you learn right?  I ate my tasty super soggy pizza and decided due to my technical difficulties, I will probably NEVER make it again.  At least not without a food processor!

Fast forward 2 days later (tonight), and I put the other half in the oven to heat up for my dinner and found it was TOTAL MUSH upon checking it 10 minutes later.  So I got out a sheet of foil, splatted the 'pizza' cafeteria style by 4 spatula fulls of goopy pizza-like masses, put it back in the pan on the foil and baked it another 15 minutes. 

The outcome?  Upside-Down Pizza Casserole that was half stuck to the foil (because of course I failed to spray the foil with Pam!)...  But it was actually more firm than the first night I had it and even tastier to eat... even though 1/4 of it I couldn't scrape from the foil... So, there it is.  My attempt at the Cauliflower Pizza.  May it rest in peace.  (See Recipe below.)

(This pic is borrowed from the lady I got the recipe from.)

Cauliflower crust:
1/2 head of fresh, raw, grated cauliflower
2 c. low fat, low moisture part-skim mozarella
2 tsp. garlic (I used chopped garlic from a jar)
1 tsp. Mrs. Dash. (I used Tony's instead)

Mix the ingredients together and spread out on a pizza tray sprayed with pam. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Flip pizza crust over when done & add your choice of toppings. (Mine are below.)

Pizza Toppings:
1/2 c. Hunt's No Sugar Added Italian Style Sauce 
(or you can make your own low sugar sauce, some people do that)
1/2 c. yellow pepper
1/2 c. mushrooms
1/2 c. mozzarella
18 slices of turkey pepperoni or canadian bacon. Bake at 425 for 10 more minutes or until its cooked to your liking. Cool for 10 minutes before serving. 

Note: The crust does not come out as firm as a normal pizza; if you use a pizza stone it will help.

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