Pizza Perfection

Hello.  I used to blog here.

As a bit of a re-introduction, I love food.  I love cooking and eating and even though I might sometimes be lazy, I want what I eat to be great.

When you heard from me last, I had been diagnosed with my gluten and lactose intolerance.  Since then, we have also discovered I'm intolerant to soy.  It's been quite an interesting journey adapting my diet to get rid of the things that were causing so many issues.  I still suffer from IBS, so even with my new diet I do have to be careful with some of my IBS triggers.

Five months of relatively clean eating (I have had the odd "gluten"-ing or "dairy"-ing, not fun) has seen me feeling so much better.  I really feel like a completely different person.  I am not getting sick nearly as much as I used to, I have energy and motivation.  I'm enjoying going places and seeing people and I've discovered some fantastic new foods.  I also kicked off the new year with a 21 day detox which made me feel better still and I'm trying to maintain a lot of that by eating more paleo (although I love my quinoa and the occasional legume).

Feeling like a new person may not be entirely due to my dietary changes, because I have now lost 43kg since I started my weight loss journey in August 2010 (if you want, you can read about how it began here).  So, I'm less than 2/3 of the person I used to be, but now - at the risk of sounding massively corny - I'm much more than I was.

Lots has happened in my life since I last posted, apart from the lack of the will to write, but I'm starting to get the itch back again.  I have a lot of backlogged posts from when I wasn't eating properly and I'm tossing up whether or not to post them.  We'll see how I feel!

My revival recipe was dinner tonight.  D bought a ham and mushroom pizza from the Eagle Farm Markets and I countered with the creation you see above.  A socca pizza monster.  Please excuse the iPhone photo, every single one of the photos I took on the camera turned out blurry.  I may have been lazy with some of my food pictures, so you might see a couple of iPhone photos coming up.

I love socca but I haven't had it for a while.  I didn't want to make a complicated pizza base, I just wanted quick and easy.  My pizza had to have vegetables too, lots and lots of vegetables!

Socca Pizza
inspired by so many people to list

1 cup chickpea flour
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbs garlic powder
1 tbs onion powder
1 tsp Italian herbs
1 tsp salt
1 cup water
2 tbs coconut oil

Your choice of toppings  (I used tomato pizza sauce, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, capsicum, kale, cashew cheese and a drizzle of balsamic before serving)

Mix together the chickpea flour, pepper, garlic and onion powder, Italian herbs and salt.  Slowly add the water while stirring to avoid lumps.  Let the mixture stand for 15-30 minutes.

While the mixture stands, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Line an 18cm cake tin with baking paper and add coconut oil.  Place the tin in the oven to heat the tin and oil, leave for about 10-15 minutes.

After the oil is hot, add the batter and return to the oven for approximately 30 minutes.

Once the socca has cooked, remove it from the tin and place it on a lined baking tray.  Turn off the oven and switch to a hot grill.  Add toppings of your choice and place under the grill until lightly browned or cooked to your liking.