We all crave winter warmers. Even those of us on the paleo diet. I tried out this lasagne variant this weekend while my parents were visiting us. Before I launch into the recipe, there are a few things you need to know:
- there’s no milk in the recipe, to keep it strictly paleo;
- there’s no pasta in it (obviously);
- this was highly experimental so there is a section at the end on what I would improve next time – I’ve built these amendments into the recipe below; and
- my mother is allergic to cow’s milk while my father and partner don’t like goat’s cheese, so I ended up making two!
Paleo lasagne - the small(er) one on the right is the goat cheese one. My mother only got through a third of it!
Ingredients (to make one to serve 6 people):
1kg beef mince
3 tins chopped tomatoes
2 chopped onions
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 tbsp tomato puree
herbs and spices to flavour (I used 1/4 tspn dried chilli seeds, 1/2 tspn ground coriander seed, 2 tspn dried oregano and 1 tspn dried coriander leaf)
2 large butternut squashes
cheese to grate over the top (I used cheddar and a hard goat’s cheese, but I would imagine that a blend of cheddar and mozzarella would work really well)
Directions:
- Put the onions and pepper in a large pan with a little olive oil and fry over a gentle heat until the onions are lightly browned and the pepper is starting to soften.
- Add the mince and keep it moving in the pan until the mince is broken up and browned throughout.
- Add the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, herbs and spinces and a tin of water (I use this to rinse the last of the tomato out of the tomato tins).
- Reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced to a good bolognese consistency.
- Meanwhile, skin the squashes and cut into slices about 5mm thick (if you like, reserve the seeds – you can toast these for a snack later on).
- Steam the slices of squash until you can put a fork in them with ease, but not so that they are falling apart! (This took about 8 minutes for me, but I cut the slices much too thickly this time.)
- In a lasagne dish put in a layer of bolognese and place a layer of squash slices on top. Continue this layering process up the dish, aiming for two or three layers of bolognese and two layers of squash (it’s entirely your choice whether you end with a layer of sauce or a layer of squash, I did both).
- Spread the grated cheese over the top of the dish. The lasagne can be stored in the fridge at this point until you want to cook it.
- Place in a pre-heated oven at 180C. If you’ve had it in the fridge then bake it for 1 hour, keeping it covered with foil for the first half hour to stop the cheese getting over-browned. If you are going straight to baking from preparation stage then bake it for 20-30 mins.
- If the cheese isn’t browned when you’re ready to serve it then pop it under the grill for 5 minutes!
Things I did wrong or would change:
- I’ve recommended the squash is cut to 5mm. I cut it to twice that thickness and the layers became a bit too hefty. If anything you may want to try getting them a bit thinner than 5mm, but that will depend on the sharpness of your knife and your squash-cutting skills.
- I cut the squash in slices across the neck of the squash. It would have been better to cut them down it’s length so that the slices were bigger. I found the lasagne collapsed a bit if I was near the edge of a piece of squash.
- I put a layer of sliced cheese in the middle of the lasagne (layered up as mince, squash, cheese, squash, mince, squash, grated cheese). This was theoretically a great plan but the melted cheese became oily and the lasagne slid into two sections, top and bottom, when I served it up. It refused to hold together as a presentable layered dish. General consensus round the table was that the cheese in the middle didn’t add anything to the dish and should be left out next time.
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Im not sure I understand you wright? – you say there is no milk in it, but you put cheese on top? cheese is a milk product, and certainly not paleo… I am confused?!
I’m afraid I forgot to put the word “optional” by the cheese for the topping.
There are mixed approaches to the Paleo diet and for some people cheese can be combined with a Paleo diet approach.
Some people are, as you say, completely non-dairy in their Paleo approach – in particular those who closely follow Professor Cordain’s arguments.
However, some people mostly avoid dairy but still have it sparingly on the odd occasion (taking a sort of 80:20 approach) or avoid milk but still have a cheese and yoghurt in moderation, since they subscribe to the view that fermented dairy is processed differently by the body and may well have been consumed by our early ancestors (I subscribe to this approach and explain more about my reasoning in the second part of my Paleo Diet Intro on this blog).
There are a few people who keep all dairy in their diet – mostly those who found they saw little improvement by stripping it out and who get noticeable muscle-building benefits from milk.
Those who are completely non-dairy will want to leave the cheese off the top and serve the lasagne without a browned cheese topping (or perhaps serve it with some grated cheese in a dish on the table for non-Paleo guests). However, a large number of followers of the Paleo diet would most likely still choose to have a little browned cheese on the top of a winter-warmer dish like this.
I hope that makes it a bit clearer.