Rice Pizza

Rice Pizza? What could that be?

Following some nice tortillas Sunday and Asian carry-out on Monday, we found ourselves with a bit of a surplus of rice at Casa Hayes-Boh, and took to the cookbook shelf to see how we might use it. My first inclination was to reprise the Tabasco-enhanced Country Captain Chicken we had enjoyed a couple of weeks ago, but since chicken had been featured in both the Asian dinners and the leftover Asian lunches, Pam suggested pulling the essential Jane Brody's Good Food Book from the shelf.

I found a lot of entries under "rice" in the index, including all kinds of items about rice -- its preparation, nutrition, measurement, and so on. But I also found the intriguing "Rice-Crust Pizza" on page 480 and decided to give it a try, modifying the quantities, mainly by sheer guesswork.

I began by beating one egg and combining it with the cooked rice (we had just a bit more than a cup and a generous pile of shredded mozzarella). I applied olive oil to a glass pie pan and pressed this mixture into it. I then placed the pan in a 450F oven for 30 minutes.

Then I combined tomato sauce (after opening the wrong can, I pureed one can of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato paste to get a thick sauce), dried oregano and basil, and freshly minced garlic. When the crust was somewhat browned, I spread this sauce on generously (having once worked at a pizza place where sauce was rationed, I do not like to skimp!). I then added some sliced mushrooms (and favorite topping would do) and freshly shredded parmesan.

Crisis averted! While it baked a further ten minutes, I set about to open the inevitable Malbec, breaking a corkscrew in the process. We have been cursed with poorly-made corkscrews and can-openers of late, but we are not to let a simple failure get between us and a nice wine pairing. After a miserable attempt with channel lock pliers, I retrieved our spare cork  jack from the car and wrested the cork from the bottle.

Victory is ours!

We then removed the small pizza pie from the oven. Having the cheese IN the crust made for a nice extra bit of crunchity goodness. We'll be doing this again, I'm sure!