Our latest feast

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Macaroni Beef

If you were to ask Alex, my daughter, what she would like to have for dinner - without hesitation she always replies Macaroni Beef! This dish has been a favourite of hers since the first time that it was cooked and if Alex had her way we would eat it nearly every night.


It is from a collection of cookbooks called Symply To Good To Be True which focusses on tasty, healthy and low fat homestyle cooking suited to weight loss, diabetes, heart problems, cholesterol and good health. These cookbooks have been written by Annette Sym, who lost 35 kilograms herself in 1993 and has kept it off to this day.


I am an avid user of these books but one thing I do find with a few recipes from these books is that some of the portions are quite large, especially too big for my children so I have to admit to modifying some recipes slightly. This is one of those recipes where the portions are quite large as the original recipe served 6 and I have to admit I found, as did my family, that there wasn't enough of the topping. So now I get 8 serves from this dish and I have doubled the quantities for the white sauce mix to ensure there was a thicker layer of the topping.



Macaroni Beef
(recipe adapted STGTBT Book 2)

Serves: 8
Points per serve: 5.5

600g lean beef mince
cooking spray
¾ cup carrot, grated
¾ cup zucchini, grated
1 small onion, finely diced
½ cup frozen peas
1 x 420g can tomato soup (condensed)
2 teaspoons chicken stock powder
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 cups cooked macaroni noodles
2 tablespoon low fat butter or margarine
6 tablespoons plain flour
3 cups skim milk
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
salt and white pepper to taste
1 ½ cups reduced fat grated tasty cheese
3
Preheat oven to 180 deg C.

Coat a large non-stick frying pan and cook mince until browned. Drain liquid then return the mince to the pan. Add the carrots, zucchini, onion, peas and soup. Cook for 2 minutes stirring continuously. Add stock powder and tomato paste, cook a further 5 minutes stirring frequently. Fold in cooked macaroni noodles and mix together well. Pour mixture into a lasagne dish.

Melt margarine in a saucepan, add flour and cook for 1 minute. Slowly add the milk and whisk to avoid lumps, stirring continuously until boiling. Stir through the dijon mustard and season to taste with the salt and white pepper. Pour over the meat and sprinkle with grated cheese. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until top is golden brown.

(If you omit the topping points per serve would be 4 points)

4 comments:

Colleen said...

I love meals like this - so easy and delicious!

Donna-FFW said...

Looks almost like a shepherds pie. Sounds wonderful, so tasty, and so easy to make.

Pam said...

Low points and delicious...my kind of meal. My kids would love this too - it's total comfort food.

Adalita said...

My partner and I were looking on here for inspiration and I realised his Mum makes a similar version to this called Macaroni Yuck! So he is off across the road to get the recipe so I can compare. (I'll de fattify his Mum's recipe if necessary)

:P