Cauliflower Pizza Crust

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I filled up my dinner plate with potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and especially my sister-in-law's sensational Irish soda bread tonight, rather than with corned beef.

And of course, I dressed for the occasion.

Mmmmmmm soda bread

For lunch, I made a pizza with a cauliflower crust, using the recipe from the Detoxinista blog. Megan Gilmore offers both an easy and a hard way to do it, and why do I always choose the hard way? I steamed my cauliflower florets, and then riced and squeezed the life out of it to remove the excess water. It is truly staggering how much water can be squeezed out of two pounds of steamed cauliflower.

Steaming the florets

Scraping the riced cauliflower into a dish towel to be squeezed

I don't have a picture of the squeezing, but here are clumps of riced cauliflower, post-squeeze

This recipe makes a tasty crust that genuinely holds together, and somehow tastes neither like cauliflower nor goat cheese nor egg, which is what it's made of. By the way,  a tip for you: 1/3 cup of chèvre is about 3 ounces.

To top the pizza, I sliced and lightly fried some Brussels sprouts, and then threw in a dash of rice vinegar. I put those on the crust.

Then I piled fresh mozzarella cheese on top. If you live in my corner of the world, and you do not at least occasionally buy balls of fresh mozzarella from the surly staff at Antonio's, then you maybe need to rethink a lot of things about your life.

Mozzarella

The topped pizza before it went back in the oven

The topped pizza after it went in the oven

This leprechaun demonstrates the durability, flexibility, and deliciousness of the crust

UPDATE: Kathleen's amazing soda bread recipe!