GLUTEN-FREE, GRAIN-FREE, REFINED SUGAR-FREE, SPECIFIC CARBOHYDRATE DIET (SCD)
I miss pizza. There, I’ve said it. Ok, I really, really miss pizza. For as long as I can remember Friday night was pizza night. I first starting buying pizza dough from the local farmer’s market but then I discovered I could make my own very easily. I started experimenting with different recipes until I found one that I was happy with. If I really thought about the fact that I will never have a real pizza again I could cry. Or I could do what I do best; create an alternative that I can eat. Enter, cauliflower cheese pizza.
I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that this will taste like a “real” pizza. However, it is delicious. It is healthy and it is also easy to make. You won’t be able to pick it up like regular pizza but you can still load it with delicious toppings. My personal favourite toppings were and always will be Parma ham and fried egg. It brings me back to my days spent as a student in Genoa, Italy. What fine days there were!
After a year and a half on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and much progress, I recently cut nightshades out of my diet. I was still having some problems and I decided to see if eliminating them would make any difference. Almost two months nightshade-free, I definitely feel better and have even less symptoms. That’s why I decided to make this cauliflower cheese pizza nightshade free by using pesto sauce as a base. Feel free to substitute passata if you tolerate tomatoes well.
As always, I am not offering any medical advice here, just my own experience. If you intend to change your diet, you should speak to your doctor first. A valuable lesson I have learned on this healing journey is how really different we all are. One person may tolerate one food very well and for another it can cause huge problems. Introducing new foods very slowly on the diet really helped me to see clearly what I was reacting to.
This cauliflower cheese pizza is made better by wonderful toppings. If you can find a additive-free pesto then you can use that as your pizza sauce. If not then you can find my pesto recipe here. Dry curd cottage cheese goes great as a topping on this pizza. To see a photo of the one I buy in Polish shops in Ireland, click here.
| Prep Time | 10 minutes |
| Cook Time | 35 minutes |
| Servings |
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- 1 Cauliflower head, chopped
- 2 Free range eggs, beaten
- 1/2 cup (50g) Cheddar cheese, grated
- 1/2 cup (50g) Parmesan cheese, grated
- Sea salt
- Black pepper
- 2 tablespoons Extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons Basil pesto* *Additive-free or make your own
- 4 slices Parma ham slices, torn into pieces
- 1/4 cup (25g) Dry curd cottage cheese (Twarog)
- 1 Free range egg
Ingredients
For the pizza base:
For the toppings:
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- Preheat the oven to 180°C Fan, 200°C electric, 390°F or gas mark 6.
- Add the chopped cauliflower to a blender and blitz until you reach the consistency of cauliflower rice. I have a really powerful blender so this takes less than one minute.
- Heat the olive oil in a pan on a medium heat and add the blended cauliflower. Season with salt and pepper and cook for roughly 10 minutes, stirring constantly.
- Once cooked, place the cooked cauliflower into a large bowl. Add the eggs and two cheeses and mix well. On a baking tray lined with parchment paper, lay the mixture out flat using a large spoon.
- Bake the pizza base in the oven for 15 minutes. While it's in the oven, prepare your toppings.
- Add the pesto first as a base. Then layer with parma ham and dry curd cottage cheese.
- Crack one egg in the middle of the pizza base.
- Bake again for 5-10 minutes until the egg is cooked to your liking. Enjoy!