I was looking through a new (at least, to me) magazine called Clean Eating at Jon’s one of these last times we were getting our hairs cut (hair cuts?) and found this cool looking recipe for a pizza where the crust is made out of shredded potatoes.
This was just too interesting an idea to ignore, and I went looking for that particular issue at the store, but alas, they were out of that issue.
Luckily, I’d taken a picture of the recipe with my preciousss, ermmm, iPhone, and transferred it to my “New Magazine Recipe Ideas” folder to await it’s turn and/or my inspiration.
My inspiration, if you care to call it that, turned out to be a bag of Yukon Gold potatoes starting to think about doing something nasty in a dark, bottom cupboard – as da Google is my witness, I swear I will never buy potatoes by the large bag again!
INGREDIENTS
•1-1/2 pound (about 8 cups) potatoes
Toppings:
•Balsamic Roasted Peppers
•2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
•Dried oregano and rosemary, or use whatever pizza spices you like
•Crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
The nice magazine folk called for well-scrubbed white potatoes, but I figured my rapidly aging Yukons would do in a pinch. They also thought it a good idea to grate the potatoes by hand, then toss ’em 
into a large bowl of cold water while finishing grating the potatoes by hand and then squeezing all that water out again in a kitchen towel at the end.
Bother.
I washed my potatoes, roughly chopped ’em, and tumbled the batch into my food processor for a few pulses. Voila! Nicely grated potato in no time. I should note that because I’d filled the processor bowl, I had to pull a couple of chunks out and run them through again; but it was still faster than hand grating and then soaking.
Heat your oven to 375º.
Next step was to toss the grated potatoes into a clean kitchen towel, which you then need to roll up around them and twist and squeeze to remove a surprising amount of water. I would recommend using a towel you don’t mind getting discolored, since I’ve had the potato liquid stain in the past.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, or apply kitchen spray, and pat the wrung-out potatoes into a round or rectangle about 1/8 inch thick – I topped mine with a bit of waxed paper and ran the rolling pin over them to compact ’em a bit.
Into the oven for twenty minutes, then remove and sprinkle lightly with a bit of salt and black pepper.
The original recipe called for roasting peppers and sliced eggplant just before you 
do all this to the potatoes, but I just happened to have a bag of my roasted peppers sitting in the freezer, so opted to use them and skip the eggplant. You could, of course, use whatever toppings you like – sundried tomato would, I think, be perfect.
Layer the potato crust with the roasted peppers, sprinkle with the rosemary and oregano – or whichever other seasonings you like – and top with the shredded cheese. I added some additional seasoning on top of the cheese, along with a nice sprinkling of those crushed red pepper flakes.
Pop back into the oven for another fifteen to twenty minutes, until the cheese is melted and the crust a nice golden brown.
The parchment paper made it a snap to transfer the pizza from the hot baking sheet to a serving platter – and I have to say, it tastes every bit as good as it looks.
Hmmm; maybe I should buy another of those big bags o’ potatoes…