GF MENU: A piece of Pi

I know many cool people in St. Louis, including some relatives and in-laws (as it were). Every year when I visit, we go out to eat.

This year, as in one year previous, we ate at Pi Pizzeria: http://www.restaurantpi.com/.

They have WONDERFUL gluten-free pizza. It's thin-crust. I had it with fresh basil and grilled chicken. So very nummy.

I am very excited now, because they are scheduled to open a DC location in Spring of 2011. WOOT! District of Pi (since there's already a Pi Pizzeria, sadly) will be in Penn Quarter. Check them out: http://www.pi-dc.com/!

RECIPE: Rice Crust Pizza

So I tried the rice crust pizza from the AICR's website tonight. Since the combination of veggies would make me a very unhappy kt, I went for a basic cheese pizza version. Now, cheese is technically not on the approved list in any quantity and tomato sauce is very limited. So this is a kt-friendly dish, but not necessarily a kt-approved one...

Adapted from recipe originally posted on AICR by Dana Jacobi

Rice-Crust Cheese Pizza

• 1 cup Arborio rice (this risotto rice)
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 cup plus 1/2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese, divided
• Equivalent of 1 egg of egg replacer
• 1/2 cup tomato sauce
• 1/2 tsp. dried basil
• 1/2 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 cup shredded part-skim milk mozzarella cheese

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Coat 12-inch round pizza pan, or baking sheet, with oil. The original recipe called for cooking spray, but I don't use cooking spray because there's often soy or other odd things in the propellant that I can't eat.
3. In medium saucepan, combine rice, water and salt. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, reduce heat, cover, and cook until rice is soft, about 18 minutes.
4. In large mixing bowl, combine hot rice with 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese and egg replacer and use fork to mix until well combined.
5. Mound rice mixture in center of prepared pan. With back of fork, spread rice out to cover pan, then make edge neat. The rice is really sticky at this point. I had to use fast, quick motions with the fork to get it to spread out and not pull up off the pan.
6. Bake crust until surface feels dry and firm, 18 to 20 minutes. (It took me only 18--I cooked it on the middle rack of the oven.)
7. Remove crust from oven. Spoon tomato sauce over crust.
8. Sprinkle on basil, oregano, and remaining Parmesan cheese. Cover with mozzarella.
9. Bake pizza in oven until cheese is melted and starts to brown. Without the veggies, this only took me about 6 minutes.
10. Remove from oven and let stand 5 minutes. Cut pizza into wedges and serve immediately.

It was very good, and now I have a few meals for the work week!

Unfortunately, rice doesn't really freeze very well so this doesn't fill my need for a pizza crust recipe I could make multiple of and then freeze. But it's a very nice diversion.

It took about 80 minutes to make.