Cauliflower Pizza: gluten-free pizza with a cauliflower base

When I was doing sugar-free September I cut out gluten and so wasn't eating bread or potatoes. I decided to make pizza for lunch one weekend - my husband had a normal homemade pizza base, while I decided to try something I'd kept hearing about - cauliflower pizza.

That's not pizza with cauliflower on top (though I did once share a pizza with a vegetarian many years ago that had nothing but broccoli on top) - but where the pizza base is actually made of cauliflower. Have you heard of cauliflower rice? The pizza base is made in a similar way with the cauliflower riced and then baked in the oven. It tasted surprisingly good - cauliflower normally has quite a strong taste but it is masked somewhat by the pizza toppings.

To serve 2, you need:
1 whole cauliflower
1 egg
30g pepper
pinch of salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Pulse the raw cauliflower in a food processor until you have crumbs that look like rice.

 

Tip into a large frying pan - you don't need to add any oil - and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cauliflower loses some of its moisture.

 

Allow the cauliflower to cool then mix in a large bowl with the egg, cheese and salt and pepper.

Line a flat baking sheet with greaseproof paper and spread out the cauliflower mixture on top. Push down with the back of a spoon so you have a fairly packed down layer. Bake for 30 minutes until the cauliflower has turned golden brown.

If you can, get a spatula under the pizza base and turn it over in one piece and bake on the other side for ten minutes.

Remove from the oven and spread with tomato puree. Top with grated mozzarella and whatever pizza toppings you enjoy, and return to the oven for a few minutes until the cheese has melted.

Why not give it a go if you haven't tried this before?

Cauliflower Tikka Masala, Diwali and Memories of Gwalior

This weekend is Diwali, the Festival of Light, celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, so what better time for a vegetable curry recipe?

Diwali celebrates the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil; people clean and decorate their homes, put on new clothes and light lamps and candles both inside and outside their homes, praying to Lakshmi, the goddess of fertility and prosperity. Gifts are exchanged and Indian sweets are eaten - we had some in the office at work for people to try.

The festival has a different origin for other religions, and when I was reading up on it for an article I wrote for the intranet at work, I discovered Sikhs celebrate Diwali as marking the release of the Sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, from a prison in Gwalior, India. The reason I was so fascinated by this is that I have actually been to Gwalior!

 

In 2008 I went to the wedding of two friends in Bhopal, India. Both bride and groom lived in the UK but both had families in India so they had a ceremony in England but the wedding itself was in India. A group of my university friends decided to go - I remember doing a lot of the planning, booking train journeys so we could fly into Delhi, visit the Taj Mahal and make our way down the country to where the wedding was taking place. While looking for somewhere to stop on the way we came across Gwalior and spend a day walking around the fort and a night in a hotel there. We had a fantastic time - looking back at the photos now I was struck by the majesty of some of the sights we saw (and then by how different I looked eight years ago!).

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe from the Sunday Times magazine - possibly quite some time ago. I'm not sure as I tore the page out and kept it in my recipe clippings folder. The recipe involves roasting a whole cauliflower but I wanted to make this a quicker, easier recipe so cut the cauliflower into florets. I actually steamed them rather than roasted as well to speed up the process so the flavour of my dish was undoubtedly different to the intended recipe, but I did use the recipe to make the sauce, which involved quite a lot of ingredients and a bit of effort.

This is the version I did with steamed cauliflower rather than the whole roasted one:
To serve 4, you need:
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
3 fresh red chillies
2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, peeled
2 tbsp. garam masala
1 tbsp. sweet smoked paprika
1 bunch fresh coriander
75g flaked almonds
2 tbsp. tomato puree
groundnut oil
2 onions
400g tin light coconut milk
400g tin tomatoes
1 whole cauliflower

 

Toast the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan then put in a food processor. Trim two of the chillies and add to the food processor with one of the pieces of ginger, the garlic, garam masala, paprika, most of the coriander and almonds. Pulse until you have a smooth paste, add the tomato puree, season and blend again.

 

Finely slice the remaining ginger with the onion and remaining chilli. Put a casserole pan over a medium heat and add some oil. Fry the ginger, onion and chilli for ten minutes. Spoon in the spice paste, turn down the heat and fry for ten minutes. Meanwhile cut the cauliflower into florets and steam.

 

Add the coconut milk and tomatoes, bring to the boil then simmer until thickened.

 

Toast the leftover almonds in a dry pan. Mix the cooked cauliflower with the curry sauce and top with the toasted almonds and rest of the chopped coriander. Serve with rice.

 

I'm sharing this with the Food Calendar at Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

Slimming World adapted Cheesy Broccoli and Cauliflower Bake

This broccoli and cauliflower bake can either be served as a side dish or as a main meal; it's a low-fat Slimming World recipe that is pretty filling and can be made in a large casserole dish to feed the whole family.

The recipe uses broccoli but I decided to make this with both broccoli and cauliflower and it worked really well - if you were having this as the main part of your meal, I think just having broccoli on its own would be a bit boring. I don't like cherry tomatoes so instead used tinned tomatoes.

 To serve 4, you need:
250g cauliflower florets
250g broccoli florets
200g cherry tomatoes, halved and quartered, or 200g tin chopped tomatoes
2 eggs, beaten
200g fat-free cottage cheese with onion and chives
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
salt, pepper
4 tbsp. finely chopped parsley
110g reduced fat Cheddar, grated

This recipe has 4 syns per serving if you are following Slimming World's plan.

Preheat oven to 220C. Cook the cauliflower and broccoli in a pan of lightly salted water and drain.

Mix the broccoli, cauliflower, spring onions and tomato in a large ovenproof dish. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs with the cottage cheese and garlic. Season and add the parsley.

Pour over the vegetables and fold together. Sprinkle the cheese on top and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Slimming World Cauliflower Rosti Pie

This recipe makes a nice side dish but is also something you could have as a main course. It's a Slimming World recipe that is syn free; it is quite starchy from the potatoes but not as bland as you might think, thanks to the addition of tomatoes, cheese, herbs and spices. You can find the recipe here.

To serve 4, you need:
for the base:
700g potatoes, peeled and grated
pinch of salt
2 egg whites
1 onion, grated
low-calorie cooking spray
for the filling:
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves chopped
800g cauliflower florets
150ml vegetable stock
1 tsp dried mixed herbs
handful of parsley
120g Red Leicester, grated
200g cherry tomatoes, halved
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika

 

Preheat the oven to 200C. First, grate the potato using a cheese grater and squeeze out any excess moisture. Mix in the salt, egg white and grated onion. Use to line the bottom of a pie or casserole dish
and spray with oil.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15-20 mins, uncovered, then cover with foil and bake for another 20 minutes.

Meanwhile spray a frying pan with oil, and fry the cauliflower, onion and garlic and add the stock. Cook for 10-12 minutes. Allow to cool, then in herbs, half the cheese, and the beaten egg.

Spoon into the pie crust, top with the rest of the cheese and the paprika, and bake for 30 minutes. Best served with green veg; if you wanted this as a side dish instead of a main course (which is how I had it) I think it would go well with sausages or vegetarian sausages if you want to keep the meal veggie.

 

I'm sharing this with Meat Free Monday, hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.

Low Carb Fish Pie with Cauliflower Mash

My low sugar diet also means low carb, as the starch and glucose in potatoes raises your blood sugar, so I've been looking for some good alternatives. I like cauliflower and wondered if I could make a fish pie and put mashed cauli on top, and found a few recipes online doing just that.

I followed this recipe for the cauliflower puree but I couldn't get mine smooth enough; I think if I had cooked the cauli for longer so it was softer that might have been better. I wouldn't have thought to add cheese and cream into it as well; it was quite nice, though to be honest I would have preferred mashed potato!

For the fish pie, I cooked a mixture of fish - I think I had white fish, salmon and smoked mackerel, and added some chopped leaks and made a white sauce.

I put it in a pie dish, spread the cauliflower mash over the top and popped it in the oven to brown.

Here you can see the fish and the topping. This felt like a very virtuous recipe and is good if you're cutting down on potatoes and miss having fish pie - but I have to say I would only eat it as "diet food", whereas a lot of the low cal/fat/sugar recipes I make are nice enough to eat whether you are on a diet or not.

Roast Cauliflower, Sumac and Rocket Salad

Now that the weather is nicer (and I have ten weeks and counting to the wedding) I'm starting to want to eat salads but in the evening also want a more substantial meal. This recipe is really good as it's chunky - cauliflower in a salad is a lot more filling than just cucumber - and it's also a very 'clean' recipe with simple flavours that makes you feel quite virtuous.

The recipe came from YOU magazine in the Daily Mail - I love the magazine so my parents keep it for me every week as I don't buy the newspaper. The recipe is also available online here.

To serve 4, you need:

500g small cauliflower florets
1 red onion, peeled and sliced
5 tbsp. "good olive oil"
sea salt
1 heaped tsp coriander seeds, coarsely ground
sumac for dusting
2 handfuls rocket

Preheat the oven to 210C/ 190C fan. Spread the cauliflower and onion out over a roasting tray and drizzle over 4 tbsp. olive oil. I used this one my fiancé brought home from me, which is made from olive groves owned by the man who owns the company he works for - very nice!

 

 


Season with salt and scatter over the coriander seeds. Roast for 30 minutes then leave to cool.

Dust the cauliflower with sumac - a Middle Eastern spice - and mix with the rocket. Drizzle over another spoonful of oil and serve.

I'm sharing this with No Croutons Required, hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.

Roasted Cauliflower Steak with Stilton

 

Inspired by the meal I had at the Coin Laundry and making a real effort to do Meat Free Mondays (and make them a bit more interesting than just pasta and pesto) I decided to make my own roasted cauliflower steak. It was very straightforward so I’m not going to bother writing a whole recipe, but if this is a dish that you’ve never come across before then you might find it a nice change.

 

Take a cauliflower and slice through the middle to cut in half. If you want you can try slicing it into three to make flatter ‘steaks’, but my cauliflower was quite small and I didn’t think this was going to work.

 

Line a roasting pan with foil, and either rub the cauliflower with olive oil or spray with Fry Light if you are being really healthy. You can add any herbs and spices you like – sumac (commonly used in Middle Eastern cooking, available in supermarkets) works really well with cauliflower, as does coriander and cumin. A light sprinkling of salt also helps bring out the flavour.

 

Roast in a preheated oven at 175C for about 25-30 minutes until the cauliflower is tender and browned.

 

To serve, I simply crumbled up some stilton cheese and sprinkled it over the top. This is a good way of using up leftover cheese from Christmas on a healthier dish!

 

  

I served it with quinoa – serving it with another vegetable on the side seemed odd but it needed something. I’d also recommend trying couscous, especially if you go with a more Middle Eastern seasoning.

 

 

 

I'm sending this to Extra Veg, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle at Utterly Scrummy. 

 

I'm also sending this to Meat Free Mondays, hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.

 



 

Mini Pumpkin Stuffed with Cauliflower Rice

It may be a little late now but perhaps you have your Halloween pumpkin left over and are wondering what to do with it? Providing it isn't too past it - or you haven't left it out on your doorstep all night for passing wildlife to nibble on (or worse) then of course you can eat it!

I bought a couple of mini pumpkins or 'munchkins' from Sainsburys for 90p each which I thought were just the right amount for one person - though I forgot that once you scoop the seeds out, there's not a huge amount of pumpkin left. So I would do these as a side vegetable rather than as the main course -though you could use the same recipe with a larger pumpkin for a main course.

I roasted the whole mini pumpkin in the oven for about half an hour, by which point it was soft enough to cut in half and scoop out the seeds (if you can, just cut a small section off the top and scoop it out that way as it looks better when it's served).

For the filling, I mixed some cauliflower rice - which I explained how to make here, but in this case I bought a tub of it from Tesco - with some diced red pepper and red onion, though you can add whatever veg you like. I fried it until the peppers and onion were soft and then filled the pumpkin with it.

 I served it on a bed of spiralized carrot which I also bought in Tesco.

 

I'm sending this to the Extra Veg challenge hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours - I don't often have entirely vegetarian meals and I don't even like pumpkin all that much but these are fun and seasonal so I can't resist!

 

 

Slimming World-style Cauliflower Rice

I’d seen a few posts on Facebook about Slimming World cauliflower rice – not an official SW recipe but something that people following the plan were making. It’s a low-carb alternative to rice or potatoes, and fits in well with Slimming World’s new Extra Easy SP plan (the SP stands for ‘speed’ I think, as it’s a way of giving your weight loss an extra boost). The other advantage is that it only takes a couple of minutes to make.

 

It’s really easy to make and tasted OK – you can tweak the added flavours as you like – but it did taste very strongly of cauliflower. That seems an obvious thing to say but what I mean is that the taste is very condensed and intense, as you are reducing down the cauliflower. I would say the texture is more like cous cous than rice but it seems to have developed this name which has stuck.

 

You can grate the cauliflower by hand but it’s much easier to use a food processor if you have one with the correct grater or shredder attachment. Cut the raw cauliflower into florets and grate until you have fine crumbs.

Place in a microwavable dish and cover with a lid or piece of clingfilm, leaving it a bit loose. Cook on full power for 2 minutes. If you don’t have a microwave you can cook the cauliflower ‘rice’ in a steamer but make sure the steamer has very small holes so it doesn’t fall through!

 

 

Add salt and pepper to taste and any other seasonings you wish – herbs and spices are ‘free’ on Slimming World so you could add cumin, parsley, whatever you like. You could also treat this like a cous cous dish and add raisins, or spring onion, or anything else that takes your fancy.

 

I’ve only made this once but did enjoy it and think I will try to have it once a week instead of potatoes, pasta or rice.

 I bought a really cool plate from Amazon which helps with portion control; the plate is divided into three sections. The largest section can either be for your protein or your veg and the smaller portions are good for carbs such as potatoes, or a sauce, or anything that you want to control the portion size of. If you want to buy one you can click on the 'shop now' link below.
 

I'm sending this to the Spice Trail Challenge hosted by Vanesther at Bangers & Mash as the theme this month is 'temple food' and this is really virtuous!