Well, my friends and I had an epic girls' night in. Complete with homemade pizza. Only, normal pizza doesn't exactly fit into the South Beach diet. At least not Phase 1. And at least not if you want more than a couple bites. So I had my own special pizza. Okay, I'll be honest, when it was sitting next to the cheesy pepperoni pizza the other girls made, mine looked a little sad. But I actually loved the way it turned out and will definitely make it again! My whole 9" pizza, with toppings, had only 33 grams of net carbs! Also, I didn't check all the ingredients (particularly the cottage cheese and ranch mix), so I'm not 100% sure, but I think this could be a gluten free meal too.
Let's start with the crust. I looked around at different low-carb recipes and my favorite one was by Detoxinista. But since I'm also limiting my dairy, I didn't want to put cheese in my crust. So this is what I did.
CAULIFLOWER PIZZA CRUST
INGREDIENTS
1 head cauliflower
1 egg, beaten
1 t oregano
a pinch of salt (I forgot to add it, but I won't next time!)
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 400F. Cut florets off cauliflower and discard stem. In a food processor, "rice" the cauliflower (see link to original recipe for more detailed instructions).
2. Put 1" water in a large pot and bring to a boil. Add cauliflower rice, cover, and boil for 5 minutes.
3. Strain cauliflower. Once cooled, place in a cotton kitchen towel and squeeze all the excess moisture out of it.
4. Combined squeezed cauliflower with remaining ingredients until you get mushy, but uniform dough.
5. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and press dough on to form pizza. (I made mine into a circle, even though I was baking it on a jelly roll pan.)
6. Bake 35-40 minutes until crust is firm and golden brown.
Okay, so the best part about this dough is that you can make it in advance. Which is what I did. You can freeze it, if you think that far ahead, but since mine was only done a day in advance, I just kept it in a dish. Anyway, the next part can be done immediately after cooking the crust, or whenever you feel like pizza and pull it out.
LOW-CARB RANCH CHICKEN PIZZA
INGREDIENTS
1 prepared low-carb pizza crust
1/2 C lowfat cottage cheese
1 T dry ranch mix
6 oz grilled chicken
mushrooms
olives
spinach
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 400F. Combine cottage cheese and ranch. Spread evenly over crust.
2. Slice toppings (I really liked the combination of all of these, but feel free to mix and match veggies according to your preferences) and put on pizza.
3. Bake 5-10 minutes so everything is hot.
It really was delicious. I ate 3/4 of it and felt full, but had the last piece a few hours later. The whole thing had about 600 calories, so a moderate-sized dinner. But it was pizza! And it was delicious! And it filled me up! So, all in all, I'd say that was a success.
No comments:
Post a Comment