High Fat! Indulgent Keto Lasagna

This week we all worked so many hours and it was just impossible to find the time to cook properly. I started work early sometimes from 6am and worked 12 hours solid, sometimes more, through until the evening. Grabbing a boiled egg here, a plate of cold meat there and lots of blocks of cheese with the odd forkfuls of steamed broccoli and green bean and I did a lot of intermittent fasting, one day was a 22 hour fast! I don’t recommend working at this pace but sometimes life needs a lot from you!

Sick of bland and boring food, on Friday I said to Nick that I wanted to make something really delicious. I wanted something that didn’t feel like I was being ‘good’ with my diet. So I created this lasagna.

My best friend also had flu at the same time so I created a separate small one for her too and took it round. She messaged me later to say how incredible it was and she was so right, we cleaned up 1kg of local farm mince between the three of us in that meal and a huge block of cheese for the crust melted on top. Super indulgent.

This meal came with that lovely food satisfaction that you get from eating something really indulgent, it felt so special and yummy, we didn’t miss anything, the pasta would have definitely taken something away from this meal and of course is terrible for health anyway. The courgettes had a lovely bite with all the water taken out of them. It was the perfect balance of sharp tomatoes, soft and chewy mince and gooey cheese. I want to eat it again right now!

Since I clearly can’t recommend it enough, I decided to share this immediately with you. It is happily also very simple to make which means it is now going to become a family staple in this busy household.

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t like waste! Not at all! I have cats, chickens and teenagers and they all have huge appetites and hoover up pretty much all and any leftovers. I reuse fat from roasts and pan frying. We only cook in saturated fat at fairly low temperatures and if you have read my other blog about why I eat lots of fat every day, you will know that they are stable and healthy (unlike seed oils). I had some fat left over from cooking sausages for everyone earlier in the day, so I used that fat for flavour. Using stock or broth in these recipes would also work so well and give everyone a lovely gut healing health boost.

Use good fats liberally when you are on a keto diet.

Recipe for Indulgent Keto Lasagna

Ingredients:

(all organic where possible)

For the Meat

1 large onion

1 tin plum tomatoes

Sea salt

1kg Grass Fed Minced beef

4 Cloves garlic (or garlic powder)

Black Pepper

Wild Garlic (I had some dried ramsons knocking about so I used about 1 tbsp of this in the meal but if you don’t have access to it, you don’t need it)

For the Bechamel sauce

300ml cream

100g butter

100g cream cheese

250g grated cheese

large pinch nutmeg

For the ‘pasta’ layer

2 courgettes

sea salt

It was not my intention to share this lasagna recipe from the start so I apologise for the very rough photos, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like. I also used a plate far too small for my capacity to eat at this point and yes! I finished the lot :)

Instructions:

This recipe needs a little prep as you want to get as much water out of the courgettes as possible. If you are brave then use a mandolin to slice the courgette lengthways, If you aren’t confident with a mandolin then thinly slice the courgette, about 2-3mm thick with a knife and lay out the slices side by side on kitchen roll (unscented/unbleached ideally). Sprinkle over them all with salt. If it makes life easier, chop the courgettes in half so you can handle the vegetable when slicing it more safely. It doesn’t matter if the pieces are not too long. Leave these covered with kitchen roll for 2-3 hours, the salt will draw the water out of the courgette. This step is very important!

Finely chop the onion and smoosh the garlic and put into your fat (olive oil, coconut oil or ghee are all great for this - or use left over animal fat, tallow, lard or chicken/duck fat, depending on what you have). Add plenty of fat to cook with, remember fat makes ketones and we want the fuel for our cells! If you want to add in bacon pieces/lardons for flavour, this is the place to do it. I didn’t add them on this occasion. Lightly fry on a low heat until the onions are translucent then add in the mince and lightly fry, stirring until cooked. Add in seasoning, ramsons, salt and pepper to taste, a little at a time until you get the right balance. Add in the tin of plum tomatoes and chop it into pieces with a knife. Let the whole thing simmer on a low heat. If you need to, add a little meat stock/broth here.

Then ad the cream and butter into a pan and let them melt in together. Add in the cream cheese and let that thicken the sauce. when its well combined and warm but not boiling, then add the grated cheese - it’s very important to keep stirring here so that it doesn’t stick or curdle, add in the nutmeg and stir well.

Prepare the courgettes by getting more kitchen roll and pressing it against the sides of the courgettes to get out water - without damaging the integrity of the slices. Press on them to get out the water and put to one side ready to use in the place of pasta sheets.

To create the lasagna

Put one layer of meat sauce in the bottom of a high sided clear glass baking dish. Then put a layer of courgettes over the top of it and put a layer of bechamel sauce on that. Repeat again, with another layer of courgettes on the bechamel sauce (don’t worry if the sauce is thin and the courgettes don’t sit on top of it, put the courgette on anyway, it’s going to taste amazing), then put a layer of meat on top of that. Repeat this process until you reach about 1cm away from the top of your dish (or you run out of ingredients) then finish with the rest of your courgette, double up if you want, it’s fine, you can use up everything you have left and then stick lots of grated cheese on top of the final layer of courgette. Grated Mozzarella, Emmental, Gruyere, these all melt really nicely and add fat and protein.

If you want to, add some thinly sliced tomato and a sprinkle of oregano on top of the cheese to decorate.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees C until the top is crispy and browning. Serve immediately with a beautiful Salad with lemon juice and lots of olive oil.

If you still need more fat, add slices of butter on top of your lasagna. If you have cancer, pay attention to the portion and the amount of protein in this and just cover it in olive oil and butter. Work out the whole lasagna first, weigh it when it’s cooked, then divide that by the portion you take off to stay inside your personal macros. Then by adding butter, you should really ramp up close to your fat needs for the day and it tastes just sensational.

Serve with a low carb salad, for those doing keto for cancer omit the red peppers and tomatoes, except maybe a tablespoon of them finely diced in the whole salad for flavour, colour and texture and add in celery, cucumber and more olive oil. Salads should be mostly leafy greens, lowest carb veg and a little bit of the higher carb veg for flavour.