Sooner or later, most serious pizza lovers will need to go on a diet. Unless you were lucky enough to inherit an incredible metabolism, chances are, you’ll probably end up with a few unwanted pounds one day.

Low carbohydrate diets, like the South Beach diet, are usually effective for weight loss. In fact, they’ve even been shown to lower cholesterol levels. Low carb diets are pretty easy to stay on because there are lots of satisfying foods you can enjoy, and it’s not hard to find something to eat if you go to a restaurant.

The down side is that conventional pizza is off limits. And after a few weeks of protein and veggies, you’ll likely be craving one. Most pizza toppings are okay on low carb diets. It’s the pizza crust that’s the deal breaker. Just one slice of Boboli thin crust has 24g of carbohydrates.

Delicious low carb pizza.

But recently, we tried a low carb pizza crust that was worth getting excited about.

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Really good low carb pizza crust.

This crust is tasty, inexpensive, easy to make, and perfectly legal. There are really only three ingredients:

1 cup cooked, riced cauliflower
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1 beaten egg

Cut a large head of cauliflower in half and then use a hand-grater or food processor to cut it into rice size pieces. Put the riced cauliflower in a microwave-safe dish with a lid and microwave it for about four minutes. Don’t add any water.

Spread the cauliflower on a plate to let it cool for a couple of minutes. Then combine it will the grated mozzarella and egg. We added some oregano, basil, garlic powder, and a little grated parmesan for flavor.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Oil a cookie sheet or pizza pan — we got good results with our cast iron pizza pan — then spread the cauliflower mixture onto the pan. We ended up with about a nine inch round.

Bake the crust for about 15 minutes, or until it starts to brown. Remove it from the oven, add you favorite pizza toppings, then pop it under the broiler for a few minutes until everything is hot and melted.

Because there’s so much cheese in the crust, you’ll need less cheese as a topping. If you’re doing the Atkins diet, you can use traditional pizza meats like Italian sausage and pepperoni. Just make sure they’re cooked before you use them. For the South Beach diet, leaner meats like ham, prosciutto, or sausage made with chicken are preferred.

Tomatoes and tomato sauce have some carbs, so use these sparingly. But most vegetables are virtually carb free, so add as many as you like. Onions, peppers, artichokes, olives, and mushrooms are all good choices.

The pizza we made was extremely satisfying. In retrospect, we added more cheese than we needed to. And even though it was smaller than the pizzas we usually make, we couldn’t even finish it. We each ate about a third, and left a third for some other time.

We didn’t get hungry later, and we satisfied our pizza craving without blowing our diet. If you’re trying to lose a little weight, or even if you’re not, give it a try. It’s a good way to get another serving of vegetables into your diet.

Find more diet pizza ideas here.

We just got back from traveling in the South of France, and as you’d expect, the food was fantastic. One of the most enjoyable parts of our trip was visiting the fantastic food markets. Each town has its own market day, and some have a market every day but Sunday. The Saturday market in the town of Arles is one of the best is the area. And there’s a permanent market in Antibes that’s open every day but Sunday.

The restaurants here serve lots of fresh seafood and other ingredients that you find in the market — vegetables, herbs, and olives. Because the South of France is so close to Italy, there’s also lots of pasta, dishes with tomatoes, and pizza.

There’s a pizza restaurant in just about every small town, and many of them having wood-burning ovens. They don’t make traditional Neapolitan pizza here — the crust is thicker and there are more pizza toppings. But they do create a delicious pie.

We were a little surprised by the pizza toppings, which don’t vary a lot. Nowhere did we see pepperoni, Italian sausage, or the usual pizza meats. Here, as in Spain, it’s all about the ham. Jambon cru, which is like prosciutto, is the most popular choice. Some places, you’ll see specific types of ham, such as Serrano or Iberico ham from Spain.

Proscuitto Pizza

Seafood, especially ancovies, are also popular toppings. But you’ll also see tuna and calamari.

Most places offer both white and red pizzas. White is sauced with crème fraiche, which is absolutely delicious. The white pizzas are best with vegetables like caramelized onion and mushroom.

The French are known for their fabulous cheeses, and here’s where they make their mark. Unlike in American and Italy, mozzarella isn’t the star of the show when it comes to pizza cheeses. Emmental, which is similar to Swiss cheese, and is made in Switzerland, is very popular. Chevre, or goat cheese, is also used a lot, and it’s frequently combined with arugula.

Arles Market

Gruyere, Fontina, Reblochon, Comte, and Roquefort all makes delicious pizzas.

Many of the pizzas we had has a black olive in the center, and virtually all of them had a drizzle of excellent local olive oil. This really brought all the flavors together and improved the overall taste. A carafe of olive oil with chili peppers is served with your pizza. It’s pretty spicy and adds a nice zing.

We found an artisanal olive oil at our local farmers market and we’ve started drizzling it over our pizzas. It wasn’t inexpensive, but it was well worth the money.

The best pizza we had in the South of France was at La Cantina in Saint-Remy-en-Provence. The town itself is quite charming, one of the cutest in the region. And the restaurant was surprisingly quite modern. But the pizzas there were some of the best we’ve ever has, anywhere.

If you’ve been to gourmet pizza restaurants like Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles or Co. in New York, you’ve probably seen the term “salumi.” But since the word has come into fashion only recently, you may not know exactly what it means.

Salumi is Italian (it’s the plural form of salume), but it’s not a misspelling of salami, although salami is a form of salumi. Confused yet?

Salumi refers to Italian-style cured meats in the same way that “charcuterie,” refers to the French equivalent. And what’s not to like about that?

Most salumi is made from pork. A notable exception is bresaola, which is made from beef. Salumi is usually cured with salt, which kills bacteria, and dehydrates the meat. As the meat is cured, it become firm and the flavor intensifies.

Authentic Italian salumi

Salumi can be smoked (like speck), or unsmoked (like pancetta). Encased (like salami), or not (like lomo). And cooked (like Italian sausage) or eaten raw (like Prosciutto Crudo). It’s often thinly sliced as served as part of an antipasto.

Because it’s cured, most salumi lasts a long time if stored properly. But once it’s sliced, it should be eaten quickly. Otherwise, it dries out. Salami, which is made with ground pork and a variety of seasonings, lasts a little longer because of the added fat — usually from 20 – 25%.

Many Italian pizzas feature some kind of salumi. The most popular are pepperoni and Italian sausage. But many other Italian meats make delicious pizzas too. Coppa, capicola, and sopressata are all great meat pizza toppings.

Salumi from Molinari in San Francisco

Because of the cost of meeting U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards, few Italian salumi makers can afford to import their products into the United States. Which is too bad, because they’re really wonderful. What sets them apart is the quality of the pork, which in most cases comes from pigs that were naturally raised on a farm.

Outside Italy, most Italian butchers sell some salumi. And prosciutto and pancetta are available in most groceries. There are several American producers who are making salumi the way they do in Italy. The best known is Salumi Artisan Cured Meats in Seattle, which is owned by Mario Batali’s father, Armandino. You can order their products at www.salumicuredmeats.com

The next time you’re craving a real Italian pizza, try using some of these delicious salumi cured meats as pizza toppings.

Read more about Italian pizza meats here.

Authentic Italian salumi Image Flickr: rfarmer
Salumi from Molinari in San Francisco Image Flickr: biskuit

Nothing makes a pizza more Italian than authentic Italian meats. Since tomatoes and mozzarella are a given, it’s meat pizza toppings like pancetta and proscuitto that can really boost the flavor of an Italian-style pizza.

Not long ago, it wasn’t that easy to find these products. But these days, many grocery stores like Fresh and Easy and Trader Joe’s carry them. So you can make a delicious Italian pizza right at home.
Pancetta, which is often referred to as Italian bacon, is pork belly that has been spiced, salt-cured, and dried for several months. But unlike American bacon, it’s not smoked. In Italy, it’s often rolled and then thinly sliced. In the United States and Britain, it’s often sold diced.

Because pancetta is salty, it’s especially delicious when combined with sweet pizza toppings. Try is with ripe pear or butternut squash.

Prosciutto is uncooked Italian ham. It’s also cured with salt and aged. Some prosciutto has the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) which dictates how it is produced and what ingredients can be used.

The most famous is Prosciutto di Parma. The pigs here are fed whey left over from making Parmigiano-Regianno cheese, which gives the prosciutto a slightly nutty flavor. If you travel around Italy, you’ll notice that each region’s prosciutto has a distinctive taste.

Usually, a pork leg is covered with sea salt and left to cure for a couple of months in a cool place. After that, it’s washed and left to dry. Once it’s dry, it’s hung for up to two years in a well-ventilated place.

Prosciutto pizza

In Italy, it’s called prosciutto crudo or “raw ham” because it’s not cooked. It’s often eaten as an appetizer with melon, breadsticks, asparagus, or fresh mozzarella. Or used in pasta dishes with peas and a cream sauce. Saltimbocca, which is veal topped with prosciutto, sage, and cheese, is one of Rome’s best loved dishes.

Prosciutto is one of the pizza toppings on a Pizza Capricciosa, which also has mushrooms, artichokes, and olives. It’s also excellent with nutty cheeses like Fontina and Gruyere.

Less well known outside Italy, guanciale is unsmoked Italian bacon made from pork jowls or cheeks. To make it, the pork is rinsed in wine, seasoned and left to marinate for over a month. Like prosciutto, it’s left to dry, but unlike prosciutto, it’s meant to be cooked.

Prosciutto

There aren’t many places outside of Rome that sell guanciale, but if you have a good Italian butcher, you can ask. You can also order it online. If you have guanciale, render it in a pan before using it as a pizza topping, and the save the drippings and make something fabulous with them. It’s extremely high in fat, but since even a small amount adds a tremendous amount of flavor, it won’t bust your diet completely.

You can also make your own if have access to pork jowls and are willing to wait three weeks.

Its rich, pork flavor is the cornerstone of dishes like Spaghetti alla Carbonara and Bucatini all’Amatricana, though pancetta is often substituted.

Read more about Italian pizzas here.
And find more pizza meats here.

Pancetta Image Flickr: tsuacctnt
Proscuitto Pizza Image Flickr: stu spivak
Proscuitto Image Flickr: mandydale

If you’re like most people, one of your New Year’s resolutions was to take off a few pounds.  And if you’re like us, pizza is one of the foods that makes it so hard to do.

But good pizza toppings don’t have to be high in fat and calories.  In fact, there are plenty of great toppings that are flavorful, satisfying, and diet-friendly.

First, find the right pizza crust.

Cheese and meat pizza toppings certainly add their share of calories, but the crust is where most of the calories are.  An eighth of a Boboli original pizza crust is 140.  So two slices, which isn’t a lot, is nearly 300 calories with nothing on them.  Even dough that you make yourself has almost as many calories.

But there are some alternatives.  A 6-½” pita has about 170 calories, and with the right pizza toppings, that should be enough to fill you up.   A flour tortilla has even fewer calories.   And low-carb tortillas are an even better choice.

Make your pizza sauce sing.

Instead of using pizza or marinara sauce in a jar — some of it is packed with sugar — use crushed canned San Marzano tomatoes.  Or if you have the time, roast fresh plum or cherry tomatoes in the oven at 450 for about twenty minutes or until they burst.  The roasted tomatoes have terrific flavor.  Just add a little salt, some garlic, and fresh herbs, and spread them over whatever base you’re using.

For even more flavor, quarter some shallots and roast them along with the tomatoes.

Less-fattening cheese pizza toppings.

Reduced fat versions of mozzarella and Italian cheese blends can reduce the calories in your pie.  But there are cheese with distinctive flavor and even fewer calories like feta or goat cheese.  Sautéed spinach or arugula are especially good with either one.

Hard, grating cheese like Parmesan and Romano are low in calories.  And fat free or reduced-fat ricotta cheese can be a rich addition.

Take a cue from the Italians — who know quite a bit about pizza — and use cheese sparingly.  The classic Neapolitan pizza has very little cheese, and it’s absolutely delicious.

Lower-fat pizza meats.

Turkey or reduced-fat pepperoni is almost as good as the real thing.  In fact, some people like it better.  And chicken or turkey Italian sausage are great substitutes too.  Turkey bacon isn’t great on pizza.  But real bacon bits add a lot of bang for your calorie buck.  The kind in the zip-lock package is very good.

Italian pizza toppings like prosciutto, capicolla, and lean ham don’t add a lot of calories because a little goes a long way.  Just avoid fatty meat pizza toppings like salami or coppa.

Grilled chicken and shrimp are not traditional pizza toppings, but they’re delicious, healthy, and versatile alternatives.

Vegetable pizza toppings to complete your pie.

When it comes to calories, most vegetables are pretty much free.  And they’re nutritious and delicious.  So pile them on.  Instead of oily pesto, use fresh basil leaves.   And use lots of fresh herbs.

Caramelize onions using fat-free chicken stock instead of butter.  They add a sweet taste that’s a great compliment to salty ingredients.  Mushrooms — from simple button mushrooms to chanterelles — are also sensational toppings for pizza.

Peppers, either roasted or raw, eggplant, artichokes, and olives, pack a lot of punch in a diet-friendly packages.

By making a few simple substitutions and watching your portion size, you can indulge in the occasional pizza without blowing your diet.

Get more pizza topping ideas here.