Zucchini Pizza on a spooky Friday night

 

Just a quiet Friday nite in the Shababy/Veitch household, and like many families, Friday Night is Pizza Night. And spooky movies night (or tv shows), like The X-Files.

In our household, one of us is diabetic, and can’t eat much in the way of what the rest of us would call a “crust” or “bread”, at least not without spiking blood glucose. Gluten-free crust isn’t the answer either to a low-carb pizza, since rice flour and other alternatives to wheat are actually higher in carbs. For this pizza, the approximate total carbohydrate value is around 25g.  This doesn’t consider any sort of glycemic index since that doesn’t always seem to apply for measuring responses. http://nutritiondata.self.com/ 

So we compromise and make a breadless pizza. You could easily serve breadsticks or garlic bread on the side for folks who can eat them.

When I think about it, this dish is more like a vegetable lasagna w/o the noodles, particularly since you have to eat it with a fork, but we like calling it pizza, so humor us if you will.

What I am offering here is a simple photographic instruction on how we make this dish. Slather on the sauce if you wish, pile on the peppers, mound up mushrooms, make it how you like it for your family. In the summer when the CSA is overflowing, I like to use eggplant (my personal fave) instead of zucchini, but since it has twice as many carbs as the squash,  we sometimes make both! We love our local CSA, Mountain Cloud Farm. https://www.mountaincloudfarm.com/  

First I prep the squash whether peeling or not, then slice into 1/4″ pieces. I usually slice them into rounds, but not this time. Just brown the seasoned zucchini in a medium hot skillet in a bit of olive oil , they do not need to fully cook.

I like to line the pan with parchment to keep everything from sticking.  Next we put the sauce on and some pre-grated parmesan cheese, not necessarily top shelf, but appropriate for this application. I had also fried up a hot Italian sausage that I removed from it’s casing to layer on it’s great flavor. We sourced the sausage at Winter Ridge Market where they make it in-house from local pork.  http://winterridgefoods.com/departments/meat/

After the sausage,  we added mushrooms and roasted red peppers, along with a sprinkling of mozzarella.

The red peppers were also sourced from the CSA. When we got them home, we roasted off the skins, laid them flat on a tray, and froze them. Then they were placed in zipper bags with parchment in between to keep them from sticking together. We were able to extend the harvest from our CSA, since during some of the summer weeks there is sometimes more produce than the two of us can eat, so we learned to choose what works best for us… yes, we can pick and choose at this farm, can you?

Then of course there is the waiting… I start out with a hot 425-degrees F. oven for about 10 minutes, then reduce heat to moderate and check every 15 minutes or so. Use a fork to see if the zucca is tender; I had to drain off a little liquid in last nite’s batch, perhaps a little more browing in the skillet would have made that unnecessary.

The pizza takes 30-40 minutes, which means you can enjoy some pre-supper libations if you choose, or a game or two of gin rummy. And the results?

 

As for The X-Files, it was the last episode of the series, a bit of a let-down in a way… but after all, it’s only a TV-show, right? I mean, just because you don’t believe in them doesn’t mean…