Chaos Cooking Episode #1 – Courgette Lasagne

I’m going to begin with a disclaimer:  Should your dish turn out to resemble a pub carpet after closing and contain seemingly bizarre flavour combinations you have successfully followed my instructions, but try it anyway as you might be surprised.

With that said it should be evident that I am no kitchen goddess, I love food and I love variety and sometimes these two passions can present interesting results, but for now I am going to share some of the milder examples of my cooking experiments.

As Ioan is the head chef in our household, I’m not actually in the kitchen that often but I’m not complaining! Some couples, you know who you are, take it to another level and compete against each other for title of best tomato chutney guru or bread-baking boffin, which I think is very cute and keeps the spark alive, or at least is very amusing for the kids.

However, it seems like my new-found domesticity has triggered an urge to dredge up some culinary skills, but I am counting on some of you to share your saucy secrets here as well, so drop me a line!

Here’s my latest attempt and I know you’ll excuse the slightly blurry photo of a half eaten dish…..it was too yummy to wait.

Courgette Lasagne

This particular concoction was a product of what was in the fridge at the time and my recent efforts to lay off wheat products for a while, more about that another day.  So as well as being pretty tasty, it’s gluten free and mostly carb free as well, in case you are following a low carb diet, otherwise a sneaky way to try and get kids to eat their veges/lighter version of the original for summer meals.

The madness in the method is as follows: (roughly speaking as I’m not a stickler for measurements!)

• 500gms of beef mince
• 3 decent sized courgettes
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• A few brown mushrooms
• Yellow capsicum (peppers)
• 1/2 a red onion
• 1-2 Tablespoons of tomato paste (according to taste)
• A large squeeze of organic tomato sauce or tomato chutney (leave this out for low carb diets)
• A few dashes of soy sauce (gluten free if applies)
• Dash of oregano or Italian herbs
• 3-4 cloves of pref organic garlic (or to taste)
• Olive oil
• Cheese (I used light cheddar but you could use anything)

Preparation:

Fry onions & garlic in a little olive oil until softened.  Add the mince and herbs and stir constantly until lightly browned.  Throw in the canned tomatoes, tomato paste and ketchup followed by a dash or 4 of soy sauce.  Chuck in the mushies and capsicum and blend with the rest of the mixture until lightly cooked.

Use a vegetable peeler to make thin slices of courgette, I cut mine in half so the pieces wouldn’t be too difficult to eat.  Place one layer of courgettes on the bottom of the dish and sprinkle with grated cheese then top with a thin layer of the mince mixture, repeat this process for the next layer and top with courgettes and cheese……but make sure to cover with tin foil and push your courgettes into the mixture a little so they stay moist while cooking.

Pop the whole thing into an oven on around 180 celcius and cook for about 15-20 mins….just keep an eye to see when the courgettes are lightly cooked through (not mushy).

Hey presto! A pretty easy and pretty healthy meal…..

I’d love to feature some tomato chutney recipes……and as its a competitive field, perhaps we can do an opinion poll on the best one?

Send them to me at: genkigypsy@gmail.com…..or put them in the comments field below! Game on.

Sarah