Shepherd's Pie

The next challenge for the most awesome vegetable in the world was shepherd's pie! I had yet to make mash with mooli before making my first of the shepherd's pies so I did take a bit of a gamble. The main reason for this taking a couple of weeks of development is that we recently moved into a house with an induction hob. Needless to say we aren't getting on, if anyone has any tips for cooking on one do let me know I'm swinging wildly between burning and under-cooking at the moment.

So for this lovely recipe, you will need: a food processor or hand blender, a large glass/ceramic dish a pan for boiling the mooli and a pan for frying the mince.

Ingredients (makes 8 portions)

1kg Mooli roughly cubed
1kg mince
50g Butter
1 onion diced (about 130g)
50g full fat philadelphia
100g Cheddar grated
1 stock cube (veg or beef)
5g Cornflour (can sub for xanthan gum to reduce the carbs)

Preheat your oven to 200 C

1. Peel the skin off the mooli and cube into a pan.
2. Cover with boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes until soft.
3. While the mooli is boiling dice the onion.
4. Brown the mince and add the onion.
5. Cook the mince and onion until it starts to look well cooked.
6. To the mince add the corn flour dissolved in 1 mug (250ml) of water.
7. Stir the cornflour into the mince and allow about half of the water to evaporate off.
8. When the water has reduced put the mince evenly across the bottom of your dish and leave to one side.
9. Drain the water from the mooli and return to the heat to dry as much water off as possibl
10. Blend the mooli in the food processor.
11. Add the butter and blend again.
12. Finally add the philadelphia and blend until smooth and creamy, season if desired.
13. Spoon the mash over the mince and smooth it until even.
14. Sprinkle the grated cheese all over the top (the more the better IMO!).
15. Cook in the oven for 45 min-1hr until crispy and bubbly.

Nutritional Information

Calories  477 kcal

Fat    39.6g

Carbs  4.8g

Fibre  1.5g

Protein   24.9g

Edit: sorry for the repost, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of a MASSIVE GAP that appeared at the top of the original.

Chicken Crust Pizza

In a bit of a change from my normal blogs, this one is a complete omage to the lovely Jamie of yourlighterside.com who created this fantastic gluten free low carb pizza. I've tried a few pizza crusts while on keto and none of them have been good enough to pass onto you lot, let alone for me to add to my regular meal list.

Another reason for posting about pizza is that I've just come back from a gorgeous trip to Milan-pizza, pasta, gnocchi, gelato. If an Italian makes it, I ate it. Naturally now I'm back I need to come up with decent keto versions of them all.

You will need:

A 12 inch pizza pan, baking powder, either a food processor or hand blender unless you want to hand shred everything!

Ingredients for the crust (makes 8 slices)

200g Chicken Breast
200g Mozzarella
1tsp onion salt
1tsp garlic granules
1tsp dried basil

Ingredients for the Topping

40g Sainsburys Pizza topping sauce
100g Grated mature cheddar
12 slices of pepperoni

(in the pizza above I also used some Mattesons pork sausage, but didn't actually like it in the topping so haven't included it)

1. Preheat the oven to 220 C.
2. Line your pizza tray with baking parchment (I tried without it, good luck getting the pizza out if you choose to avoid this step).
3. Separately shred the chicken, then the mozzarella with your food processor or blender.
4. Process the chicken and mozzarella together until the mixture has a thick crumb like texture.
5. Press mixture into the pizza pan and smooth the top.
6. Shake the basil, onion and garlic powder over the top of crust.
7. Bake the pizza crust for 12 minutes.
8. All the pizza crust to cool before adding the topping.
9. Top with the pizza sauce, the grated cheddar and then pepperoni.
10. Bake the pizza for 6 minutes until the toppings have melted.
11. Slice and serve.

Nutritional Information Per Slice for the Crust only

Calories 91 kcal

Carbohydrate 1g

Fat 5g

Protein 11g

Nutritional Information Per slice with the topping

Calories 166 kcal

Carbohydrate 1g

Fat 11g

Protein 16g