Recipe: Portobello Cap Pizzas

I stopped eating carbs sometime in April. Not a forever thing, but a for now thing.

Rice was easy to give up. Pasta a little harder. And pizza? Perhaps harder still.

I haven’t had immense cravings for pizza, but every once in awhile…

And so I had to have a back-up plan.

Something to take the edge off.

And when I was strolling through the produce department recently, and spied these giant portobello mushroom caps, inspiration struck.

And by strolling, I really mean concentrating on my list and refereeing bickering kids in an effort to get in and out as quickly as possible.

I’m not going to give you so much a recipe for this, as I’m going to give you a general guideline.

Because it’s that kind of recipe. Super simple, completely forgiving, and the easiest thing in the world to individualize to your own taste buds … or what you’re trying to use up in the refrigerator.

Gently rinse the caps off and remove the stem. Put the caps on a baking sheet, into a 350 oven, for about ten minutes, until they are warmed through and start to soften a bit.

Meanwhile, heat up some tomato sauce and caramelize some onions. Once that’s ready, spread the tomato sauce gently over the inside of the mushroom caps, top with the caramelized onions, and a bit of shredded cheese. Sprinkled with a bit of dried oregano. Pop it back into the oven, just long enough for the cheese to melt.

Remove and devour.

Now, make no mistake, this is, of course, not going to replace pizza. But with the sauce and the cheese, well it’s as close as we’re going to get by skipping the dough.

And that is a-ok by me.

*Because these are more of a personal size, they are perfect to top off with your family’s favorite things. Sliced black olives? Pepperoni? Little bits of sausage or bacon? In one of my versions, I also included some sauteed mushrooms with the onions, so it was a mushroom topped mushroom pizza. I know! I also used mozzarella cheese, with a little bit of bleu cheese thrown in for good measure. Go crazy, you can’t screw this one up.

Tomorrow? The Baltimore Zoo!