Friend of Julie: Zucchini Pizza

Key-friend Jill made an incredible Zucchini Pizza for our holiday gathering in November 2014. A handful of my key friends, who I met over the years through this blog, started a tradition three years ago to gather each November for good food, good friends, and a good old fashion Yankee Swap. This recipe is so incredible, your non-key friends will never even know they're eating zucchini. The texture of this dish is more like a casserole than a pizza, but oh my--it does taste like pizza!

A slice of heaven--I mean pizza

February 19, 2015 update: I made this recipe for dinner last night and it tasted like a slice of heaven. I put all the zucchini noodles between two towels for about 45 minutes to remove the liquid, but there were still juices at the bottom when I served this. This wasn't a bad thing and it didn't ruin this dish. I'm not sure if the pizza sauce was the cause or if I need to dry out the noodles for a longer period of time.

The prep time on this dish is 2 1/12-3 hours. It took me 3 hours, but that's because I spent an ridiculous amount of time trying to open a bottle of olive oil. It was brand new bottle and for the life of me I couldn't remove all the foil to open the jar.

Ingredients

• 6 cups shredded unpeeled zucchini
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 cup freshly grated asiago or Parmesan cheese
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
• 3 tablespoons Italian parsley
• 3 tablespoons chopped basil
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 pound sweet sausage
• Olive oil
• 1.5 cups marinara or pizza sauce
• 3 oz pepperoni finely chopped
• 6 oz grated mozzarella cheese
• Any additional pizza toppings

Directions

1. Place the shredded zucchini in a strainer or on paper towels.
2. Let stand for 20 minutes and squeeze as much moisture out of the zucchini as possible. I put the noodles between two kitchen towels.
3. Let stand another 15 minutes and squeeze out the moisture a second time.
4. While you are waiting for the zucchini, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
5. Combine the zucchini, eggs, cheese, black pepper, granulated garlic, parsley and basil.
6. Spread the zucchini mixture into a greased 13x9 baking dish.
7. Bake zucchini uncovered for 25-30 minutes until the edges are brown and the top is starting to turn lightly golden brown in spots.
8. While the zucchini bakes, brown the beef, sausage, and pepperoni in a small amount of olive oil.
9. Spread the sauce over the baked zucchini mixture.
10. Top sauce with the beef, sausage and pepperoni and any other toppings.
11. Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese and Italian parsley.
12. Bake for an additional 15-20 minutes until cheese is melted and heated through.

Key-friendly foods at our holiday gathering November 2014

This is me, serving up some of that Zucchini Pizza

Zucchini Pizza tastes like pizza, but you need a knife and fork to eat it

This really does taste like pizza!