Cauliflower Pizza flatbreads - as good as you've heard!

Cauliflower pizza crust is one of those things you read about on paleo or celiac blogs and think can't actually be worth eating - I certainly did for the longest time!  I have recently come to the realization that cauliflower isn't actually evil, if it's been sort of cooked.  I cannot stand to eat it raw, or steamed, or boiled, or in chunks larger than my thumb in a stir fry.  I have discovered that I like it raw from frozen and, of all things, baked - which is where the pizza flatbreads come in. 

Juliet Ames, Baltimore artist (and force majeure) behind The Broken Plate, is also locally famous for her love of good food.  If you've ever had a nasty cold or crushing bout with the flu and can't bear to think about solid foods, spend half an hour with her instagram and you'll find yourself getting dressed for a trip to the grocery store in no time flat.  

But I digress.  The below is a variation of her MAC Healthy Recipe of the Week for Cauliflower Pizza Crust. The only thing healthy about my version is that it still doesn't have refined grains, added sugar or anything else in a commercial crust that might not be desirable to you.  I have hens, so eggbeaters aren't a thing in my life and I used slightly less cheese than the original recipe, but the result was a worthy treat that my housemates would like in the regular rotation: 

Ingredients:
3 cups shredded cauliflower (about 1 half medium head, shredded in food processor)
3/4 cups shredded part-skim mozzarella (or whatever other cheap American shredded cheese in a pinch-top bag you can find
3 eggs, beaten
1 tbls + spice mix (Oregano/basil or Chipotle/Fiesta Lime)
assorted toppings including approx 1/8 cup additional cheese

Preheat oven to 350F, line cookie sheet with parchment paper *-* Parchment paper is absolutely crucial, because without it you will wind up with soft, smushy cauliflower breads that have a texture more suited to a casserole (and being eaten with a fork!) than flatbreads or crusts.

Combine ingredients well and evenly spread onto parchment paper in three equal portions.  Bake for twenty minutes, flip and bake for ten minutes more.  Top as desired and brown until cheese is melted.

If you are looking for a not pizza use - mix Mrs Dash Fiesta Lime seasoning into the crusts and top with smashed black beans, grilled onions and colby jack cheese.

Farm report

I really should have kept up with the farm report this year - strawberries, asparagus, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries - and the first yellow squash of the season already!  Not much beats those first few berries, except if they are served with whipped cream, cinnamon and chocolate cake:

Of course I'll be singing a much different tune when I eat that first warm peach right off the tree!

Let's do Lunch!

By Saturday afternoon my fridge looks a lot like this: Pretty barren, huh? Outside of some leftover Strawberry-Blueberry treat and a box of emergency almond bark there's not a lot besides sauces (and some onions and potatoes below). By Sunday evening, however, it looks like this:

While it's true that I could do something else with those two hours on Sunday evening, besides making salads, chopping snack veg and fiddling with ants-on-a-log, the ease of just chucking three things in a bag on a weekday morning is worth it. I have to remind myself of this regularly, because, wow, that's a long time straight to not be doing something more creative than chopping carrots.

Strawberry Blonde at the Brooklyn Diner

This morning, as my bout of insomnia left me trolling the internet, I came across a column called Grownup Food Adventures, which was about a food writer's experiences tasting real food - not the mass produced comestibles that masquerade as food, but genuine, authentic, ethnic treats that have not suffered homogenization.

One of his references was proper cheesecake. Now, my grandfather makes a kick-butt cheesecake, but I don't have pictures of it, nor am I going to suggest that you go over to his house and ask for a slice.





I can, however, suggest you have a chunk of Strawberry Blonde at the Brooklyn Diner on 57th. I used to go to Manhattan fairly regularly for work, and more often for pleasure. Every time it was a workplace event, I was under strict orders from my regional director (should he happen to be confined to Philadelphia at the time) to pick him up a hunk of said cheesecake, get off the train in Philly, and bring it to him. It was always worth the effort since it involved an expense dinner at this ridiculously wonderful german restaurant off Rittenhouse Square where the fried potatoes and onions were so good you'd commit sins for them.




Now, my favourite place was either the 24-hour deli/market where you could get fresh fruit to fight your hangover as the need arose or Oldcastle Pub, open at eight on weekdays, which serves the perfect pink pork sausage and the best real blood pudding (made with real blood!) your drunk self has ever had in this country.

*sigh*

Pub, definitely the pub.