America’s Test Kitchen (yes them again)  in their Healthy Family Cook Book (yes, that one again) have a healthy lasagne recipe. The main trick was to replace bechamel sauce with a low-fat cheese mix. They also used ground chicken instead of minced beef, but we decided to use lean turkey mince instead of bothering with all that grinding. Plus they used bought pasta sheets! That’s not how I roll…

So it starts with making the pasta. I’m trying using the food processor to do this, rather than doing it by hand as I’ve always done it before. So egg and 00 flour into the food processor.

This then gets processed for… ages! It got to a sticky breadcrumb stage but wouldn’t form a ball. Eventually I added a splash of water and then it came together.

That then gets patted together and put in the fridge. Then it’s onto the low-fat cheese sauce. This is ricotta, reduced fat mozzarella, parmesan, basil and and egg.

 This gets mixed together and goes in the fridge.

The meat sauce is Soph’s regular bolognese sauce. Fry off onion, add bacon and lean turkey mince.

Then a can of tomatoes, beef stock, red wine, and Worcestershire sauce.

Then mushrooms, garlic, italian seasoning, salt, pepper and chilli flakes go in and it cooks down.

Meanwhile the pasta gets rolled out. Starting with the chilled ball.

Down to thin sheets.

Then we’re all ready to start layering. Meat, pasta, cheese.

Finally grated cheddar on top.

Then covered with foil for cooking.

After 45 minutes at 180c fan the foil comes off.

After another 20 minutes, the top is looking much better!

Add salad, with a quick white wine vinegar, garlic and mustard dressing, and the garlic bread, and we are good to go.

OK so you could tell it wasn’t beef and bechamel, but it was still delicious. The mix of cheeses was delicious, and the mozzarella makes it all stringy. With the salad, which hardly has any oil in the dressing, it was pretty healthy too! And the garlic bread was worth the calories :)