Zuchini/courgette low carb ravioli

Last week I found myself really fancying pasta, and after searching online I found this recipe on cheap clean eats and you can find it here.

This recipe does seem quite fiddly and hard work, but having spent the time involved making normal pasta ravioli in the past I can say that this is actually much much quicker and the whole recipe took me about 40 minutes start to finish, which is longer than I usually like to spend cooking a meal, but still not too bad, especially as I was making a couple of other things at the same time.

The finished meal looked like this and was delicious and is definitely going to become one of my staple low carb meals, though I will definitely make more next time as this was not enough!

Here's how you do it!

You will need:

• One courgette (that makes three pieces of ravioli)
• Oil- I used rapeseed oil
• Mushrooms- about 8
• Sundried tomato purée (this is much lower in carbs than normal tomato purée)
• Soft cheese
• Basil- chopped
• Pesto

Method

First make the filling:

• Chop the mushrooms finely and fry them in the oil
• Once they're soft, add the tomato purée and cream cheese and stir until the cream cheese has completely melted and its formed one big paste
• Take off the heat and leave to cool

• Take the courgette and peel it using the widest vegetable peeler you have into thick ribbons.
• Lay the ribbons out with two lying next to each other and then two more lying next together on top of them (this is hard to explain, but look at the picture or the video in the original link is perhaps the easiest way to see how to do this)
• Weave one of the bottom ones over one of the pieces on top, then do the same with the other underneath one this time weaving it under the other piece. Again, this bit is very hard to explain, but it should look like the picture below!

• Add the filling to the centre of each one

• Once each one is filled, close the ravioli up, do this by folding the ends back into the centre, fold the underneath piece first each time then the top ones last, this will make sure it holds together. 
• Use a slice to quickly flip the ravioli over and place on a baking tray. 

• Drizzle with oil and place in the oven for about 10 minutes at 180 degrees

• Remove from the oven and serve with some pesto or sundried tomato purée 

Enjoy!

Low carb pancakes!

Well, as you may or may not know, it was pancake day on Tuesday and as a big fan of pancakes I was keen not to miss out! Especially as I had bought some sugar free maple pancake syrup from America the week before which I knew would go perfectly!

I looked on the internet to find a recipe and was looking in particular for a recipe to make crepe style pancakes, ie large thin ones rather than the smaller, thicker American style ones. This was mainly because I don;t have the right stuff to make the American style ones! Anyway, I found a recipe on Pinterest, which can be found here 

The recipe only calls for 4 ingredients; eggs, cream cheese, syrup and cinnamon (and some butter to grease the pan) so luckily I had everything in already.

The recipe is really simple:

   Ingredients:

3 oz cream cheese, softened

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp sugar-free syrup

1 tsp butter- for greasing the pan Method: In a bowl, mash the cream cheese with a fork then start adding the beaten eggs, 1 teaspoon at a time at first, until the mixture is smooth and free of lumps. The mixture will at first go very lumpy (or mine did) and so you will have to beat it quite hard! Beat in cinnamon and sugar-free syrup. The mixture should by this point be smooth and runny, like normal pancake batter! Melt the butter or oil if you prefer in a nonstick pan over a medium heat. When it has stopped foaming, reduce the heat to medium-low and pour in enough batter to coat the bottom of the pan, you might need to swirl it around a bit to ensure you have fully coated it.  Then just cook until the pancake is completely set, this took almost 5 minutes for me, and this step is really important as if you don't do it, the pancake will not hold together when you try to flip it!  Once it has completely set, loosen the sides of the pancake with a fork or spatula and then flip the pancake over with a spatula and cook the other side until it starts showing small browned spots, this will only take 1 or 2 minutes longer.  Turn out onto a plate, cover with your preferred topping (I used sugar free maple syrup) and enjoy!  Batter!  Pancake cooking!