I Can Cook: Grain-Free Cauliflower-Crust Pizza

In an earlier blog entry this year, I said that one of my resolutions was to cook more often.

Well, I'm really happy and proud to say that I've been a really good girl about that, cooking once a week for the two of us!*beams* And all thanks to Pinterest and the Internet, I've managed to amass quite a number of droolworthy recipes, some of which I'm saving for special occasions. Just so you know, I don't believe in purchasing recipe books (unless they are on desserts and chocolates) especially when many awesome recipes are online, waiting to be discovered. The plus point of trawling the Internet for recipes (besides it being FOC) is that you can read reviews from people who have tried the recipe and see what tweaks they make, and whether or not the recipe works for them.

For a start, the websites I usually go to for Western food are Food Network, Allrecipes, and Taste of Home, and the website for Asian food is Rasa Malaysia. And besides that I search Pinterest for interesting recipes and go crazy repinning just about every other recipe I come across. And at other times, I look through every Sunday's The New Paper for Hedy Khoo's column which features a recipe, complete with pictures. After using the recipe, I stick on the refrigerator door so that it's easy to find when I need it again next time.

But now that I've quite a number of loose sheets of recipes stuck to the refrigerator door and lying around the kitchen, KU's been nagging me to digitise or blog the recipes so that I can refer to them easily when I need them. (He knows how disorganised I am and is amazed at how I manage to misplace a lot of stuff in our house. :X)

It's going to take me some time to digitise every single recipe here, so I'm just going to start with the most recent one, which is also pretty darn amazing - Cauliflower-crust Pizza!

I first chanced upon this recipe on Pinterest, which caught my interest immediately cos I was like, how do make a pizza crust from cauliflower?! And truly, I didn't have to use a single grain (speck?) of flour in this recipe at all, and the crust still came out slightly chewy and tasting very much like normal pizza crust! Definitely a winner for me cos I can enjoy the taste of sinful pizza and yet still go low-carb!


Ignore the half-cooked, runny egg white pls!

So, recipe time:

Grain-Free Cauliflower Crust Pizza (recipe adapted from here)

Ingredients:
1 small head of cauliflower - should yield 2 to 3 cups once processed
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
1 egg

Preheat oven to 220 degrees Celsius. On a cutting board, place a large piece of parchment paper and spray it with cooking oil. 

Wash and roughly dry the cauliflower. Cut off the florets (you don't need much stem). Pulse in your food processor until you get powdery snow-like cauliflower. Place the cauliflower in a bowl and steam for 7 to 10 minutes, until cooked. Pour out cooked cauliflower onto a clean tea towel and allow to cool for a bit.
Once cauliflower is cool enough to handle, wrap it up in the dish towel and squeeze as much water out from the cauliflower as possible. This will ensure you get a chewy crust instead of a crumbly mess. 
Pour squeezed cauliflower into a bowl. Add 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, and 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano. Add one egg and mix, using hands.

Once mixed together, pour mixture onto oiled parchment paper and use your hands to form the dough into a crust. Pat it down thoroughly, forming a tight crust that is not too thick or thin.

Slide the parchment paper onto baking sheet. Bake for 8 to 11 minutes, until it starts to turn golden brown. Remove from oven.

Add however much sauce, cheese, and toppings you want. Slide parchment with topped pizza back in the hot oven and cook for another 5 to 7 minutes until the cheese is melted, bubbly, and slightly golden.

Cut with pizza cutter and serve!

For myself, I wanted to use up some ingredients that we had sitting in the refrigerator, so I stir-fried small pieces of marinated chicken thigh and added them to the pizza crust, along with sliced garlic, asparagus (loveeee 'em!!), baby tomatoes, loads of mozarella cheese and then I cracked an egg on top before sending it back into the oven.

Our pizza was really overcrowded though, cos I originally wanted to make two individual-sized pizzas and the recipe yielded only one square pizza about 18cm by 18cm, but it turned out rather filling.


Cheesy wholesome goodness!

Overall, I'm really happy with how the pizza turned out - you couldn't tell that the crust was made from cauliflower, and KU thought it tasted good! The only thing I would change about this recipe is to use either the egg yolk or white, and not the whole egg, cos it was a little wet. Annndd.. it took a rather long time to make cos of the time taken for the cauliflower to cool down before I could squeeze it, and also the double baking. I think next time I'll make the crust beforehand and freeze it.