Memoirs of an Amateur Cook

Another one of Mr MAC’s specialities is lasagne and it is one of our favourite mid-week meals.  Not only is it fairly quick and easy, it also uses ingredients we always have in, is very tasty and low in fat. An added bonus is that it can easily be adapted for meat eaters or vegetarians alike.  All in all, a really good dish for a week night meal.

I think the recipe originally came from the Slimming World website but as always, we have made a few changes!

Low Fat Lasagne

(Makes four large portions)

Pack of extra lean minced beef/steak mince

Red pepper, deseeded and diced

Courgette, cut into small chunks

Mushrooms, diced

4 garlic gloves crushed

Red onion, peeled and diced

400g chopped tomatoes

400g passata

Dried mixed herbs

Fresh torn basil leaves

salt and pepper

For the sauce:

500g fat-free natural yogurt

2 eggs lightly beaten

Nutmeg

12 dried lasagne sheets

120g cheddar cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 100 degrees centigrade
2.  Spray a large frying pan with fry light and heat.  Add the beef, pepper, courgettes, mushrooms, onions and garlic and cook for 8 minutes.
3. Add the tomatoes, passata, herbs and seasoning to the pan.  Allow to cook for 15 mins, stirring every so often.
4. In a separate bowl, mix together the yogurt, eggs, nutmeg and seasoning until smooth.
5. Spray a medium-sized lasagne dish with frylight.  Spoon half of the mince mixture into the bottom of the dish.  Top with half of the lasagne sheets breaking them to fit if needs be.  Spread over half of the yogurt mixture and repeat.  End with a layer of the yogurt mixture and top with the cheddar.
6. Bake for 30 minutes until golden.

Note:  To make this dish vegetarian, substitute the beef mince for veggie mince

Pre Oven

 We make this regularly with vegetarian mince which is just as good.  If we aren’t cooking for vegetarian friends but are using veggie mince for health purposes, we crumble over a beef stock cube to make it extra tasty.  Sometimes, we switch the cheddar for mozzarella if we have it in and other times we will add a dash of red wine to the mix.

Post Oven

 This recipe is really versatile – you can throw in a load of different veg and really play around with the flavours and textures but it can also be used as an ‘old faithful’ standby meal.

Time to dig in!