Portabella Pizza
Pizza remains a popular meal in this house. With two teenage sons it’s not hard to understand why and it makes for a relatively simple prep job for me too so I’ve got no issues with pizza…except that I’m trying to make lower cal, more nutritionally dense food for myself. The portabella pizza fits into that category plus it’s super easy and fast.
This pizza sports a big fat portabella mushroom cap as the crust. I piled it high with diced zucchini, onions, and a heirloom tomato. I tossed some Italian turkey sausage in, just about 1/3 cup, then I added some Penzeys Pizza seasoning and salt, tossed it again. The secret to loading the caps is to use your hands…that way you can press it firmly into the caps and really pile it on high.
Portabella Pizzas
(printer-friendly version)
3 portabella mushrooms, stems removed, caps wiped off
1 largish zucchini, weird, seedy middle scooped out, diced
1/2 medium red onion, diced
1/3 cup cooked Italian turkey sausage
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
Penzeys Pizza Seasoning
Olive oil
Salt
Preheat oven to 350°.
Place the 3 caps on a small baking sheeet, sitting up like cups. Combine the zucchini, onion, sausage, seasonings, and a slosh of olive oil. Toss them together well. Load the mushrooms with the filling, top with the cheese and put in the oven to bake for about 20 minutes or until the cap is tender and the cheese is golden brown.
Not actually vegetarian
I’ve been thinking about what it takes to be vegetarian, not so much because I want to be a vegetarian but mostly because I’m personally trying to eat less meat, more plants. I find that the flavor of a dish needs a boost either from spices or from fats, usually both. Because I’m also counting calories I just can’t add butter and cream to increase flavor and that certainly creates a situation that requires more thought than I’m ready to give it. Luckily there is always the pizza solution.
Pizza is easy because it requires little work and can be thrown together and baked up usually in a half hour. Remember to make the dough ahead of time and keep it in the refrigerator, actually the longer it sits in there the better it gets…I’ve used some that was in the frig for 2.5 weeks and it was excellent. This lovely pizza is adorned with slices of a peeled green apple, red onion, mustard greens, a scant toss of cheese and a link of AmyLu’s Smoked Chicken, Apple, Gouda sausage. According to the nutrition data one link is 110 calories and 5 grams of fat with 460 grams of sodium and since this pizza serves 2 with leftovers it falls within my range of low fat, low cal, low meat.
Yes, I know it’s not actually vegetarian, but then I’m not either. Note: for my local readers, the AmyLu sausage is available at the Middleton Costco.
