With the holidays over, we are getting back to our usual routines.  Many of you made a new year’s resolution to lose weight and start shedding the extra pounds or toning those muscles.  I hope you have an achievable plan.  Set those smart goals and get out there.  One year I set a new goal to learn to run.  I trained, and for a few years, I ran quite a bit.  I’ve gotten four half marathons under my belt.

To help with that healthy lifestyle, this week’s recipe is a cauliflower crust for pizza.  My spouse and her sister have been working on eating less gluten, claiming they feel much better.  To support her with Friday night pizza dinner, I scoured the recipe blogs and looked for some ideas for cauliflower crusts.  Each recipe had some similarities.  I made a few tests, and this recipe seemed the best.  It’s vegetarian, with some protein from the egg used to bind the ingredients.

I have been skeptical of these no-gluten or less-gluten diets, but I also have started to see that we eat more wheat products than we need to.  We are more sedentary than we were 100 years ago after all.  More people worked labour jobs, farmed, or were outside doing more back then, and we burned calories more efficiently.  In the last 100 years, we developed ways of mass-producing bread products and pushed more gluten and sugar products.  Let’s try to eat less gluten this year and see how we all feel about it.  I’m not suggesting you pass on that morning muffin, but maybe have dinner with more protein.

Enough of my preaching.  Here is my recipe for making cauliflower crust for pizza.

Cauliflower Crust

Ingredients

2 x 340g packages of pre-cut cauliflower
1 egg
1.5 cups mozzarella cheese
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp parsley
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp black pepper

Directions:

• Heat cauliflower in the microwave for 3 minutes.
• Strain the water from the cauliflower. This is done best with some cheesecloth or a clean dish towel.
• Mix all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until you get a mixture that will hold together when pressed.
• Spread into a 10-inch disc on a sheet pan, and keep it as flat as possible but mashed together.
• Pre-cook for 10 minutes in a 450F oven. Add your toppings and cook for another 20 minutes.  You’ll know it’s done if your cheese is browning on top.
• Let the pizza rest for 5 minutes, then carefully serve. It won’t hold up like a wheat crust, but it is close.