Cauliflower crust pizza

I wish I had some great excuse for my lack of recent blogging, or a profound recipe to share with you as an apology. Unfortunately I have neither. What I do have to share though is another low-carb cliche recipe: Cauliflower Crust Pizza.

Quite possibly the best pizza topping combination: pepperoni, shredded linguica, onions, pepperoncini's and pineapple. Plus olives for the husband's portion.

If you've been eating this lifestyle for a while you've either tried it (and probably loved it) or avoided it out of fear. Honestly, I avoided it out of fear for over a year. I tried various options, including low-carb but overly processed flatbreads and crust made from alternative flours. I thought surely those would all be a better solution to my pizza cravings than a cauliflower crust. I was wrong. I'm not sure what clicked in my head to finally venture into the cauliflower world, but I'm so glad I did. 

You may or may not taste something "different" in this crust, but there's no definitive cauliflower taste. Hands down it's the best substitute I've found to cure those pizza cravings. The potential off taste is easily masked by the tomato sauce, cheese and your toppings of choice. The only real downsides are that it's hard to photograph and that it's difficult to eat without a fork. Who cares, right? Not me, that's for sure. I can almost guarantee you won't care either.

Cauliflower Crust Pizza

Adapted from Recipe Girl

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 cups shredded cauliflower

1 large egg

1 cup cheese (preferably a combination of mozzarella, parmesan and cheddar)

1/2 t basil

1/2 t oregano

1/4 t garlic powder

1/4 t onion powder

Pizza toppings of your choice

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Take a head of cauliflower and shred until you have 2 cups worth. It won't take a full head, so plan on using the extra for another meal or make extra crust. We use a cheese grater for this step.

Spread out cauliflower on to cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until the cauliflower is just starting to brown. Remove from oven and let it sit for a few minutes to cool.

Place the cauliflower into a mixing bowl and combine with egg, cheese and seasonings. 

Place cauliflower mixture on to a fresh piece of parchment paper, spreading it as thin as you can without creating holes in the crust. Bake for another 10-15 minutes, or until it starts to develop a golden brown color throughout.

Remove crust from the oven and set the oven to broil. Apply pizza toppings and place back in oven for approximately five minutes, or until cheese topping is fully melted. Careful, the edges of the crust can easily burn at this stage.

Enjoy!

Nutrition facts per serving (crust only):
266 Calories; 17g Fat; 8g Carbohydrates; 3g Fiber; 21g Protein

Spaghetti Sauce

I should probably come clean about something. Despite the fact that I have this food blog, I don't actually do much cooking. I help out, and take care of the dishes, but the real chef in the family is my husband. He's really the one making all of these delicious meals I keep talking about. There are about two exceptions to this: Spaghetti Sauce and Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas (which I'll post about next week). These were really the only two good recipes I brought into this marriage, so I'm more likely to be in charge of these over anything else we eat.

The spaghetti sauce recipe comes from my mom. She's been making it for as long as I can remember. We've slowly adapted it to our own recipe, since the original involves a couple packets of Lawry's spaghetti sauce packets (full of crap like modified food starch and hydrolyzed soy protein). It's easily just as good, and far better for you. It's also extremely cheap to make and makes about 12 servings of sauce. Be sure to clean out some freezer space before making this dish. We find it freezes best in the glass quart canning jars.

We've been serving this over zucchini noodles, making it full of nothing but healthy vegetables and some protein from the meat.

Spaghetti Sauce
An All Meat and No Potatoes Original

Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 pound italian sausage
1 large onion
1/2 head garlic
10 mushrooms, sliced (or more based on personal preference)
80-90 ounces of crushed tomatoes (Check Costco for a big ol' jar for under $3!)
1 teaspoons kosher salt
Cracked pepper - a few twists
1.5 teaspoons thyme
3 teaspoons basil
2 teaspoons oregano
4 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic power

Directions
In a large dutch oven or deep pot, fry the ground beef and italian sausage. When it's almost down, add onion and garlic. Saute until onion is soft.
Add tomato sauce and spices. Mix everything together, then add the mushrooms.
Simmer for one hour, stirring regularly.

Short Ribs with Wine and Cream

A few months ago I was looking for a special recipe for Travis and I to make together. I don’t remember what the occasion was, but whatever it was, Pioneer Woman’s Short Ribs with Wine and Cream fit the bill. Ironically I dislike fatty cuts of meat and I’m still in denial about my newfound love of mushrooms, so what possessed me to choose this recipe I’m not quite sure. It was indeed a bit too fatty for my tastes, but Travis was in love with this meal. In fact, as soon as we brought home our 1/2 cow, he requested we remake the meal.

We were hungry, and didn't cook these as long as we should have.
If we'd gone the full three hours, more of the fat would have melted off. 

I’m still not a huge fan of the fat content, but I can’t deny it’s a tasty recipe. It’s rich, tender, and has excellent flavor. I even like the mushrooms. Honestly, I don’t think you can even improve on the recipe. I do highly recommend finding an assortment of mushrooms as the recipe suggests. Our local Safeway strangely only had cremini and portabellas in stock, and the lack of variety was definitely noticed.

It is important to note that we specified our short ribs be cut English style. It seems the more popular cut is Flanken style.

While this was a great meal for the two of us, I could definitely see serving this to guests in the future. It’s largely hands-off due to the three hour simmer time, but comes across as one something much more elaborate. It’s sure to impress at a dinner party.

Short Ribs with Wine and Cream

Slightly adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Ingredients

12 whole Shortribs

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 1/2 tablespoons bacon grease

1 cup red wine

32 ounces, fluid beef broth

1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary

2 tablespoons grainy mustard

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons capers

16 ounces by weight of assorted Mushrooms: Cremini, Oyster, Baby Bellas, Etc.

Olive oil, for drizzling

Directions

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Heat bacon grease in a dutch oven over high heat. Sprinkle salt and pepper on three sides of the ribs. Quickly sear the meaty sides of the ribs, about 1 1/2 minutes per side. Remove the short ribs to a plate.

Pour wine and beef into the dutch oven. Add rosemary. Stir to combine, scraping the bottom of the pot to deglaze. Return short ribs to the pot, cover, and place in the oven for 3 hours.

After they have cooked, remove the pot from the oven and increase the temperature to 400 degrees. Arrange the mushrooms in a single layer on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then roast the mushrooms until they're golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the dutch oven a stove burner and carefully remove the short ribs from the pot again. Stir in mustard, cream, and capers, then raise the heat and allow it thickened a bit. Return the short ribs to the sauce, put on the lid, and turn off the heat.

Serve the short ribs on top of the mushrooms, then drizzle with extra cream sauce.

Brasato al Barolo

After a whirlwind Christmas weekend, my husband and I were looking forward to a quiet New Year’s Eve at home. Making a special meal together sounded like the perfect way to celebrate. We took a trip down to the local butcher and found a nice looking bone-in chuck roast. With the help of the internet, it didn’t take long to figure out what to do with it.

The recipe I found was almost a year old but had just shown up in my Google Reader as one of The Beantown Baker’s top recipes of 2011, and it’s clear why it made the list. One sentence of the description stood out: “Cooking some beef in red wine for four hours couldn't possibly have bad results.” She was right.

In place of the Barolo wine called for in the recipe, I chose a large bottle of Yellowtail Cabernet, with the added bonus that there was extra for drinking while the roast cooked. We were also missing a few ingredients and had to improvise a bit.

After spending a few hours cooking in the wine, the roast had taken on an impressive purple color but the meat was somewhat bland by itself. The deep, rich flavor of the finished dish all comes from the sauce. It’s quite sweet but not overpowering. Despite the name of this blog, we served it with a side of mashed potatoes, an occasional treat for us in an otherwise mostly Paleo diet.

Brasato al Barolo (Beef Braised in Wine)

adapted from The Beantown Baker, originally from Emeril

Serves 4-6 

1 (3-pound) beef chuck roast
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 slices bacon, diced
1 yellow onion, chopped into fingernail size pieces
15 mini carrots, halved
4 celery stalks, chopped same as onion
5 cloves garlic, minced
4 1/2 cups (1 1/2 bottles) Cabernet Sauvignon, or other dry red wine
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/4 teaspoon dried crushed bay leaves
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons rice flour

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a large Dutch oven (oven safe), cook the bacon until done. Remove with a slotted spoon leaving the grease in the pot. Sprinkle the roast with salt and pepper, and place it in the pot and cook, turning every couple minutes to brown on all sides. Remove roast from the pot. Put the onions, carrots, celery and a pinch of salt into the pot, adding more bacon grease or other cooking fat if needed. Cook the vegetables until softened a bit and starting to brown, about 15 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Return the bacon and beef to the pot and add the wine, stock, rosemary, bay leaves and cinnamon. Bring the liquid to a simmer over medium-high heat, then cover and transfer the pot to the oven.

Cook in the oven, turning the roast once midway through, until fully tender and meat is starting to fall apart, this took about 3 hours for ours. Remove the meat from the pot and tent with foil to keep warm.

Place the pot over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Cook about 10 minutes. Ladle some of the hot sauce into a small bowl. Whisk in the rice flour then stir the slurry back into the pot. Cook another 10 minutes or until the sauce has thickened. Adjust the seasoning to taste and turn the heat off.

Place meat onto a platter and thinly slice or shred. Serve the beef ladled with the sauce.