Keto pie

Since everyone I know and their sister is currently on a keto diet when I invited a couple of them over for dinner I felt obliged to make a keto meal. Potatoes, rice, pasta, bread are all verboten on a keto diet and so are most things that are delicious and wonderful. This sounds completely insane but instead you can have all the butter, bacon, meat, cheese and things without carbohydrates. You can read up on it yourself but my family and friends have lost a combined total of approximately 4 million pounds apparently and swear by it.

I made chicken thighs and since what I would consider a normal side of a starchy accompaniment isn’t allowed by the keto gods, I made this keto tomato pie. And while I would have preferred, say, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy, this was really really good. The crust is almond flour, parmesan cheese, butter and an egg. (recipe here).

I made it in a spring form pan which while it allowed me to take it out and put it on a plate, it was a mess in the oven. It bled oil; butter or almond oil, I don’t know. I had to put a sheet pan under it and collected a good 2 TBS of oil.

This is really just a vague approximation of what I did. I did not use a recipe. But it will be fine no matter what you do. Although I don’t guarantee anything.

Tomato pie filling recipe sorta

Ingredients

4 or 5 plum tomatoes cut in half and dried in a 200 degree oven for a few hours, skin then removed (It comes off really easily)

Or you could just slice some tomatoes, take the skin off (which you do by dunking it in boiling water for 30 seconds and then the skin peels off). It’ll be more watery but that’s allowed on the diet.

I had some leftover sautéed mushrooms, I dunno, a cup of them maybe. You could put any keto friendly cooked vegetable there.

Sliced swiss cheese or any cheese in slices

A cup or so of shedded cheese, I used mozzarella but anything melty will work—don’t use gouda or feta

Scant 1/2 cup mayonnaise

2 TB dijon mustard

1 egg

You can add nearly any kind of herbs or spices you like here. Basil, thyme, oregano, garlic. I didn’t use any.

Process, if you can call it that

Make and partially blind bake the crust (If you don’t know what that means [loser] you can read about it here) — just don’t fully bake it.

I layered the bottom of the blind baked shell with Swiss cheese—slices of anything will work, even, say, ham.

Then I mixed the shredded cheese, mayo, mustard and egg and spread most of it on the bottom, layered my mushrooms and tomatoes, glopped the rest of the mixture onto them and added a layer of swiss cheese. Baked at 350 for 50-60 mins.

The sad part was that there was no dessert.

Please let me know if you read this all the way to the end. I will give you a gold star, and if you actually make this I’ll . . . nothing, no one will ever make this.