when the boy's away, the girl will play... in the kitchen

As much as I hate it when my fiancé is away (cue cheesy romcom soundtrack!), it gives me a chance to play around with recipes I normally wouldn't touch because I know he'd just roll his eyes at my experimentation and cook up some mac n cheese for himself while I'm left to sulk at the counter, just me and my experiment.

Sob story and run-on sentence aside, I decided to play around with some fresh cauliflower I picked up at the farmer's market on Wednesday. And get a little pseudo paleo while I was at it.

Hold the phone, you say! Paleo? What the eff!? Long story short... The Paleo Diet encourages us to eat as our Paleolithic ancestors did - aka meats, nuts, fruit, veggies... And that's about it. No dairy, no processed crap. Mostly is focuses on fresh, whole food. Which I can get behind. However, I need me some cheese and the occasional sammich. So instead of going hardcore paleo, I try to avoid as much processed crap as possible, and not eat pasta 7x a week. As a runner, I believe in the power of the starch!

Anyway, my pseudo-paleo cauliflower experiment was.... DRUM ROLLLLL.... cauliflower pizza crust!

Now, this was straight up an experiment that actually turned out ok, but there are a few tweaks I will make for next time to make it even better. I shall detail these as I go.

Alright, for the crust:

- 1 head of cauliflower, chopped into florets
- 1 cup shredded mozz (I used low fat)
- 1 egg
- garlic powder and Italian seasoning to taste

Preheat oven to 450 first.

Then chop up those florets and throw em in a food processor:





Blitz the hell out of them until they resemble couscous, like so:





Throw the faux couscous in a microwave safe container and cook for 8 mins. The water in the cauliflower will cook it naturally.

Tip: since you will end up with more cauliflower than you need, may I suggest a tupperware for nuking? If only to reduce your dirty dishes (I HATE DIRTY DISHES). Whatever you don't use can be thrown in the fridge for later.

Alright, in a bowl mix one egg, 1 cup mozz, and 1 cup cauliflower. Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray and dump the goopy mixture on it.





Yummmm, right?

Get a little dirty here, and use your fingers to create a pizza shape.





Pop that bad boy in the oven for 15 mins, but WATCH IT CLOSELY. I did not and mine burned around the edges.

Meanwhile....

Toppings! I decided to do my fave summer pizza, since it was all 85 degrees in march and such yesterday - zucchini corn pizza with cilantro! I did not have fresh cilantro, so I cheated





Nor did I have limes. A squirt of lime juice would have been nice. ANYWAY...

Slice some zucchini super thin (the amount is a matter of personal taste), and throw it in a bowl with olive oil, corn kernels (fresh are better, but I used frozen). If you are cheating like me, toss the cilantro paste in too.

Chop up some red onions, or if you have none, like me, shallots will do. Or yellow onions. Whatever.





Once the crust is lightly golden brown, sprinkle your toppings on the pizza. Throw some shredded parmesan on top, along with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes - all to taste. (have you noticed my disdain for measuring shit?)

Preheat your broiler (I went with the "LO" setting), and pop the tray back in the oven for a few minutes - just enough for the cheese to melt.

(Tip - where I went wrong on this one is expecting the shallots to soften under the broiler. They did, but not enough. If I do these toppings on faux crust again, I will most def soften them up in some olive oil, first. If you do these toppings on regular pizza crust, no need to pre-soften.)

Alright, next take the pizza out and dollop some goat cheese all over. The original recipe called for feta, but feta freaks me out for some reason. It's, like, not cheese. So goat cheese it is. You still get the tang that everyone says feta has, without the creepy texture.

Also, I sliced up half an avocado and put that on top, too. Why? Because everything is better with avocado. And because the burned parts stuck to the tray and the whole thing kinda fell apart when I put it on a plate, so the avocado slices hid the damage for photo ops.





VOILA!

As you can see, I let some pretty good burnage occur. I would recommend erring on the side of caution during the first round in the oven, bc the broiling will crisp up everything some more, which is what brought the edges to burned beyond being edible.

THAT SAID... how did it taste?

Ok, so this is definitely a fork and knife pizza, because the crust is not thick enough to support a ton of toppings. However, I surprisingly enjoyed it. The goat cheese was awesome, the crust had a little melty-cheese taste to it, and overall it was a perfectly acceptable vehicle for pizza toppings. It in no way replaces a perfect, carbolicious pizza crust, but if you're looking for a super healthy way to shovel some cheese and veggies in your mouth, this ain't a bad way to do it.

I bet any array of toppings would be awesome. Next time I may go for my old standby of pesto, fresh mozz and diced maters. And avocado too, I'm sure. Maybe a little drizzle of balsamic? I don't know, I just don't know if I'll have enough time.