Hello all! I had a fabulous time doing a cooking demo on carb-balanced meals last week. One of the ideas I presented was using zucchini, carrots, yellow squash, sweet potatoes, etc. in place of pasta. Yes – veggie noodles. All it takes is a great little tool called a spiralizer or even a mandoline to create your noodles. In fact, if you of a patient state of mind, you could even cut any of those veggies into fettuccine-like noodles with your knife if you are desperate. In any case, I demonstrated and garlicky chicken and noodles dish, but I mentioned this little guy right here. Sorry . . . no pics of the actual meal. I’ll have to rectify that sometime soon. In the meantime, to all the folks who attended last week, here’s the recipe I promised y’all. It’s my adaptation of a Paleo OMG recipe that I saw a long time ago. Enjoy!
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 pounds ground turkey breast or 90/10 ground beef*
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- Hot pepper flakes to taste (optional, of course, but highly recommended)
- 1 tablespoon salt-free Italian seasoning (My fave is Tuscan Sunset from Penzey’s)
- 1 15-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
- 1 15-ounce can/jar of pizza sauce (I found a nice one at Sprouts)
- 2 large zucchini squash
- 2 large yellow summer squash (or 2 more large zucchini squash)
- 8 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (freshly grated, please!)
- 1/2 cup grated Mozzarella cheese (optional – it’s really good this way!!!)
Spiralize/mandoline/cut your squashes into noodles. Put in a colander over the sink with about a 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of salt and toss. Let your noodles sit over the sink while you take care of the next few steps. Trust me on this step!! You don’t want a watery casserole and this is the way to get it. You may even want to do this earlier in the day and let the colander sit over a bowl in the fridge to drain for a few hours.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees farenheit.
Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet and add your ground turkey breast. Add the spices and mix to combine. Once your turkey has cooked about most of the way through (like 75%), add the can of crushed tomatoes and mix to combine. Continue to cook down for another 3 – 5 minutes.
(For the next step – if your skillet can contain everything, just do the following mixing in the skillet. If not, I’d dump everything into a bowl to mix, then put into your casserole.) Squeeze out your noodles in the colander to get the extra moisture out. You can even blot with paper towels to get more moisture off. Add the noodles to the cooked turkey breast mixture along with the chopped sun-dried tomatoes.
Lightly coat a baking dish (I used a slightly larger than 9 x 11 lasagna dish, but a regular 9 x 11 will work fine) with pan spray or olive oil to make sure your noodles don’t stick. Add the noodle/meat/sauce mixture. Taste and see if you need to add any salt and/or pepper. Spread the can/jar of pizza sauce over the top. Cover with the mozzarella cheese (if you are using) and Parmesan or Romano cheese.
Bake for about 30 – 40 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Let it sit for about 15 minutes before getting into it to make sure that any residual liquid soaks back into the veggies and sauce. Enjoy!!
*I’ve found that this is WONDERFUL to make with Hot Italian Turkey Sausage. If you want to do this, just use two pounds of it (removed from the casings) and delete the turkey breast, onion powder, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning.