Thursday, July 9, 2009

Recipe: Primal Lasagna

Still working on the name - any ideas? I made two servings, but these proportions are for four.

Ingredients:


600g beef mince
120g bacon
2T coconut oil
1 onion
1 garlic clove
1 leek
2 tomatoes
1 red capsicum (bell pepper)
1/2 cup black olives
1 cup cauliflower
1 cup mushrooms
2 eggs
20 cabbage leaves (red and green)
1 teaspoon each of rosemary, cumin and cinnamon

Method:

Place cabbage leaves, cropped to desired size, in steamer.



Prepare each layer -

1. Brown beef in a little coconut oil. Chop onion, leek and garlic, and add to pan. Dice one tomato, and add to pan. Remove from heat when meat is cooked through and tomato has broken down, and keep warm.


2. Dice other tomato, capsicum, and olives. Sauté in a little oil, until cooked but not too broken down. Remove from heat and keep warm.


3. Cook cauliflower in steamer or microwave, and place in food processor with mushrooms (remove stems). Pulse until fine. Remove and add to frying pan with eggs, rosemary and spices. Remove from heat once egg has solidified and all ingredients are combined, and keep warm.


4. Fry bacon, keeping as flat as possible. Remove and keep warm.

Now the fun part - layering!! Far be it from me to decide which layers go where, but just make sure to keep the heavier layers (meat and cabbage) at the bottom, and use a leaf of cabbage in between each (except for when you use the bacon, perhaps). 5 leaves each, alternating the colours, if you please! ;)


Here's the first one I put together:
























And now for layering #2 (the one I ate) - things got a little sloppier this time; too hungry to fuss!


















Served with spinach - rough, primal, fancy, delicious!

6 comments:

Yummy said...

What a fabulous meal!

mrjwhit~ said...

Would have never thought it could be done, but WOW that looks great.

Unknown said...

This is something similar with a national romanian dish called "sarmale"

We also add rice, but it is sometimes replaced with minced mushrooms..

The main difference is that we roll the cabbage leaf.. We place some of that mixture inside the leaf, and then roll it.. untill you have a douzen of them.. boil in for an hour or so.. and that's it..

Just make google search for "sarmale", and see what you get ;)

Jezwyn said...

Yep, there are lots of recipes that involve cabbage and minced meat - look at all the Polish lasagne for instance - and I'm no stranger to stuffed cabbage (although I've never liked it). Cool to know that it is Romanian though - I always thought it was Greek; a semantic extrapolation from dolmades, I'm sure :)

But the point of this recipe was to use up as many veggies in my fridge as I could, ready to embark on my zero-carb, carnivore diet... But more on that tomorrow! :)

NathanM said...

I didn't see the instructions for the Leek. What do you do with that veggie?

Thanks
Nathan

Jezwyn said...

It's chopped with the onion - see method point 1. :)