Extra lean beef goes with lasagne like tomatoes go with mozzarella. The tomato sauce keeps the meat moist, while going lean instead of standard beef mince saves 105 kilojoules and 3g of fat per serving.

Using cottage cheese instead of ricotta may have traditionalists choking on their barolo, but it saves you 238 kilojules and 7g of fat per serving.

Bringing on the mozzarella instead of traditional béchamel sauce is a tactical substitution worthy of Ancelotti as it halves the kilojoules and fat in your topping. Grate the cheese yourself as pre-grated bags contain anti-clumping additives that spoil the flavour.

The stealthy addition of grated zucchini provides over a quarter of your daily vitamin C requirement. A recent study by Harvard School of Public Health showed that upping your vitamin C intake from food rather than supplements can cut oral cancer risk.

The hidden spinach provides a healthy dose of iron, which, according to the British Nutrition Foundation, keeps your immune system firing on all cylinders. To boost this effect, drink orange juice as your digestif.

"The vitamin C makes the iron more readily absorbed," says Richard Faulks, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Food Research in the UK.

The MH Lasagne
Serves six


You will need:
50g lean beef mince
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 stalk celery
1 medium carrot
150g mushrooms
Olive oil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
800ml crushed tomatoes
50ml tomato paste
285g spinach leaves
1 medium-sized zucchini
450g low-fat cottage cheese
2 egg whites
Black pepper
6 oven-ready lasagne sheets
50g low-fat mozzarella cheese

Plus: Deep frying pan, large baking dish

1 hour 20 minutes
Preheat your oven to 190°C. Crumble the mince into a frying pan, add salt and fry over a medium heat until brown (about seven minutes). Drain any excess fat by placing the meat in a sieve, out it aside and start preparing the vegetables for the sauce.

1 hour, 10 minutes
Finely chop the onion, garlic, celery, carrot and mushrooms, add to the frying pan with one tablespoon of olive oil and fry for five minutes. Stick the beef back in the pan. Pour in the tomatoes and paste, add oregano, basil and sugar. Go on, live a little. Season with salt to taste, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer while you prepare the rest of the lasagne.

1 hour, 5 minutes
Chop the spinach into small pieces and grate the zucchini. Watch your fingers - knuckle flesh really hinders the overall flavour. Add the cottage cheese, egg whites and some salt and pepper, then blitz with a hand blender or in a food processor, if you have one.

This makes the cottage cheese appear much more like the far lardier ricotta usually found in lasagne. Grate the mozzarella and set safely aside.

60 minutes
To assemble your culinary masterpiece, spread one-quarter of the tomato sauce over the bottom of the baking dish. Cover the sauce with lasagne sheets, top with another quarter of the meat sauce, spread the cottage cheese filling over the top, then gently cover with more sauce. Place more sheets over the filling and top with the remaining sauce. Cover with aluminium foil and bake for 45 minutes in your preheated oven. Remove the foil and sprinkle the top with the mozzarella, bake for a further 15 minutes. Crack open a bottle of wine and get dig in.

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