Cooking with Amy: Cauliflower Pizza Crust

I know.... this looks A-MAZ-ING!! This is a pizza I had for lunch the other day. I love, love, love pizza, but unfortunately it is not really very healthy, and for some people it is just plain old off the menu due to gluten intolerance.

This pizza is made with cauliflower as a base, something that I discovered whilst surfing instagram one day. I have tried lots of different cauliflower base recipes, but this one actually stays together, and you can pick up the slices with your hands rather than having it fall to pieces. This pizza base also has an added bonus of an optional protein boost, if you are protein powder inclined.

What you'll need:

1 x head of cauliflower

1 x egg

1 x tblsp cheese of choice

2 x scoops of protein powder (optional)

Toppings of choice.

How to do it:

For this recipe, your cauliflower is going to act as a flour for your pizza base, so you need to make cauliflower rice. When I first heard of cauliflower rice, I was quite overwhelmed, but it really is as simple as putting your cauliflower florets in a food processor, or as I have done, grate it. You'll need about 2 cups to make a one person sized pizza.

Put your cauliflower rice on a plate, cover it with cling wrap, and microwave for about 3 minutes. You want to cook it. Don't add any water, because the cauliflower contains water in itself, and you actually will be drying it out in the following steps and adding water just makes the process longer.

Once it is cooked, lay out a clean tea towel and pour the rice out on it. You want it to cool down enough so that you can handle it comfortably.

Once it is cool enough to handle, pick up the tea towel with the cauliflower inside and squeeze all of the water out. You want it to be really quite dry as, like I said, it is acting like a flour.

 

Put your squeezed out cauliflower in a bowl with your other ingredients and give it a good stir until it is combined. I use a fork or a desert spoon, as it helps you get it all together (and saves on big dishes!). 

**a note on the protein powder** I add two scoops of whey protein to my cauliflower pizza base, as this fits my macronutrient requirements. If you don't want to add protein powder, and you feel like your mix is really sloppy, you can add a bit of flour to the mix (oat, rice, wheat etc.).

**a note about the cheese** Use whatever cheese you have in the fridge. In this instance I used tasty cheese, but I often use ricotta, cottage cheese, mozzarella, or Parmesan.

Pour your mix onto a pizza tray covered in baking paper. You can see from my picture that it is still a bit mushy. This will change when you cook it so don't stress out about that. Put your base in the oven at about 180 degrees for 20 minutes or until it is brown on top.

Pull it out and top with whatever you feel like. On this day I was feeling in need of vegetables, so I mashed some avocado and put on some sliced capsicum, grated zucchini, and some baby spinach. But I often just put tomato paste and a little cheese on top.

Cook it again for around 10 minutes, or until your toppings are cooked. Slice up, move to a plate, and ENJOY!!

Try it! You know you want to!

Green - Power Pancakes

I am a big fan of eating food that is nutritious, delicious and satisfies my nutrient needs for the day. I had seen a lot of people making spinach pancakes on Instagram, and while I had been putting spinach in my smoothies for a while, I had never tried it in pancakes, so I thought I would give it a crack and see if I could make some green pancakes of my own.

I must say these pancakes ROCK. I have tried them a few times now, and they are really yummy. My kids will even eat them up, and they don't even know how good they are for them!! The awesome thing about these pancakes (besides how good they taste) is that because they have spinach in them, they turn bright green when you cook them! Very cool for a little man who likes super heroes!

These pancakes have a lot of protein in them. I use protein powder most of the time when I cook pancakes post-workout, but for this recipe I have used egg whites. You can separate your eggs if you like, otherwise you can buy cartons of just egg whites from the supermarket. They are usually in the egg section, or frozen (with the frozen berries).

I know, I know, shut up and give us the recipe already! So here it is! I'm sorry it isn't super printable and such, I am sure I will figure out how to do those things at some point in the future.

Green - Power Pancakes!
 
Ingredients:

Pancakes
3/4 cup Egg Whites
1 1/2 cups Baby Spinach
1/2 cup Oats or Oat flour
1tblsp Greek Yoghurt
4 Sticks of Stevia (or other sugar alternative)
1/2tsp Baking Powder
Coconut Oil Spray

Topping
Greek Yoghurt
Cinnamon

Method:

 
1. Put all of your pancake ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend until it is really smooth. Lumps are not your friend here.

2. In a fry pan on medium heat, put spoonfuls of mixture, wait until the edges start to look cooked and there are a few bubbles on top and then flip them over. You don't want to overcook your pancakes, you want them nice and soft and fluffy.

3. Stack your pancakes on a plate as they are finished and top with Greek Yoghurt and a sprinkling of Cinnamon. You could add bananas too, but I didn't have any this particular day.

4. Enjoy... YUMMMM!!

meat-free 'meat balls'

Last night for dinner, I decided to raid the pantry as we were having one of those "argh I have no food left in the fridge" moments. After a bit of digging around and deciding what to do, I decided to wing it. This was what I created - 

 

I was so impressed by it, I thought I would share the recipe. No one around here even realised that this dinner right here doesn't even have any meat in it!

This is the kid version...

Meat-free ‘meatballs’. (serves about 6)

Ingredients:

‘Meat’balls:

2 cups of well-cooked lentils (you need to be able to mash them)

1 egg

3Tblsp Oat Flour (read how to make oat flour here)

2 Red Onions

1 Clove of Garlic, crushed

Salt & Pepper

Spices of choice (I used oregano)

1Tblsp Olive Oil (or whatever oil you use)

Sauce:

1 Jar of pasta sauce (I used passata)

1 clove of garlic, crushed

1 onion, diced.

Salt and Pepper

Oregano

Method:

Put your lentils in a bowl and mash them. I just used the saucepan I cooked them in. Make sure you mash them up until they are nice and smooth.

Add your egg, oat flour, garlic, onion, salt, pepper and spices of choice** and give it a good mix. I used the potato masher to do my mixing so that if I missed any lentils they were mashed in the process.

Heat a frypan on medium-high. Roll your lentil mix into balls and cook them off in batches until they are brown on the outside. Take them out of the pan and put them on a plate.

 

Now it is time to make your sauce –Reduce the frypan heat to medium low.

Fry off the onions, garlic and oregano. Add the pasta sauce to the pan and bring to a simmer, stirring regularly.

Add your ‘meat’balls back to the pan and cook until they are nice and hot.

I served the balls and sauce with baby spinach and pasta. The pasta really ups the carbohydrate content, so next time I might use spaghetti squash or maybe slimpasta as an alternative.

** I say use whatever spices you like because lentils are pretty neutral tasting, so you can add whatever flavour you like. If you want to serve this with noodles, you could add chilli and coriander and make it nice and spicy.

Hope you enjoy making and eating meat-free meatballs as much as I did.