Low-carb moussaka

One of my absolutely fave dishes is lasagne. But since I am currently on a low-carb diet, I cannot have any. I am not using any grains currently. The funny thing is, I don't actually miss them that much. Sometimes I'd really like to have some bread, of course and I do miss pasta. Other than that, I have not missed it at all. But back to the topic at hand: since I cannot have lasagne, I tried to think of a low-carb option and moussaka came immediately to mind. It is a traditional Greek dish, often made with egg plant, zucchini and potatoes. I made a low-carb version, so obviously I did not use any potatoes.

Our local super-market did not have any egg plant, but I found a huge, yellow zucchini to use instead. Remove the ends and peel it slightly, see photo below.

Slice it up, add salt to the slices and put them in a sieve/colander and leave for a while. This will remove some of the extra liquid. I think this is probably more important to do for egg plant but I did it for the zucchini in this case also.

The traditional moussaka recipe calls for the slices to be breaded, but I simply skipped this part.

Meanwhile, fry up some onions, garlic and ground beef in a pan/skillet, add crushed tomatoes and spices: salt (I always use sea salt), black pepper (freshly ground, from the mill), a bit of red wine (about 1 DL), one teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice (pimento). You can add fresh parsley, but I did not have any so I didn't. I did not even have dried parsley, so I simply left it out (cooking is not an exact science).

The recipe may call for flour, bread crumbs or other grain products - simply leave them out. And the same goes for sugar as well. If you must, use a sugar substitute. However, I just left it out.

Spread the zucchini slices evenly on the bottom a lasagne dish and spread some of the ground beef and tomato mixture on top (see photo below).

Repeat with the rest of the slices and add the rest of the ground beef mixture. Then shred a lot of cheese on top and add big gobs of butter (see photo below). Note that I do not use bechamel sauce at all. I have never liked it, I simply find the consistency of it revolting. I have always made lasagne this same way as well - just with tons of shredded cheese instead. I used both edam and parmesan cheese but you can use pretty much any cheese you like. The real Greek cheese would be Kefalotyri but it may be hard to find.

Cook at 175 C (350 F) for 45 minutes.

There are many, many recipes on-line and I usually make an adapted version of several of them. This is one I looked at:
http://greekfood.about.com/od/eggplant/r/moussaka.htm

Serve with red wine (if you wish) and enjoy! You can add a nice green salad also if you wish.