Sunday, February 19, 2012

Zucchini lasagne

There are times when I miss being able to eat lots of high-carb goodies like bread, or cookies, or sorbet, or rice, or pasta. Pasta was my go-to dinner solution whenever I was on the run and needed a quick fix. But Type 2 diabetes has nixed that for good.

BUT! I NEED MY LASAGNE! Gotta have my lasagne! *whimper*

Well, where there's a will, there's a way, or at least a recipe.

This glorious wonder of nature is homemade zucchini lasagne. IT IS SO FREAKING CRAZY GOOD that I don't miss the noodles (which were always a colossal nuisance to work with anyway; the boiled ones clung to each other and the pan-ready ones required a completely different, and soupier, recipe to work properly).

I just make my regular lasagne recipe, except instead of using lasagne noodles I substitute strips of young zucchini thinly cut lengthwise with a cheese slicer and dry-fried on both sides in a nonstick pan until most of their water is gone. I just layer them into the casserole as though they were noodles. Zucchini already marries well with typical ingredients for lasagne, so this works like a charm. Even CM and V, who are not compelled to eat low-carb, like this stuff and clamor for it.

We're pretty much ready to eat, if the lazy slugs I live with will stop taking naps and get their little rears into the kitchen. Anybody else want some?

7 comments:

Linda said...

Hi, this looks good enough to eat!!! May I come for dinner??
love, ya, Mom

Soozcat said...

Sure, come on over!

Rachel said...

Recipe please?

Soozcat said...

I don't really have a set recipe. It was just kind of slapped together.

This time I browned some Italian sausage and mixed it with a bottle of low-carb pasta sauce (Trader Joe's three-cheese; it isn't specifically sold as low-carb, but I check the labels). I sliced up two or three small zucchini and dry-fried them in a nonstick pan until they were starting to color, flipping to the other side to brown, then removing to a plate. I mixed together cottage cheese, a couple of eggs, some pepper, parsley and oregano. Then I layered the casserole: bottom layer a small amount of meat sauce, then zucchini, then shredded mozzarella, then more meat sauce, etc., putting the cottage cheese mixture in around the middle of the casserole. Finished off with the last bit of meat sauce and let it bake uncovered in the oven at about 350 until it looked good (about 45 minutes), then sprinkled some mozzarella on top and slid it back in until the cheese melted (about 10 minutes). It firms up a little more if you let it rest for a while after it comes out of the oven.

Rachel said...

Thanks! I'll have to try it. I'm trying to cut down carbs/sugars while increasing veggies and this sounds like a great recipe to try.

Anonymous said...

You might want to squeeze the zucchini for water as well. Have you considered spaghetti squash?

Soozcat said...

That might work. Though I usually have trouble getting spaghetti squash cooked just right.