My friend Amber made this dish a while ago and it sounded delicious, I was determined to turn it into a Slimming World friendly dish and make it as close to syn-free as I could.

I changed out the cream cheese for Quark and instead of taco sauce, I mixed taco seasoning in with tomato sauce (passata), I used extra lean beef mince (though this would taste delish with shredded chicken) and I measured out the cheese as my HeA.

They ended up being zero syns, that’s right, totally syn-free!

Stuffed Taco Shells

Ingredients:

16 large pasta shells
1lb extra lean beef mince
Two tins tomato sauce (or large jar of Passata)
Veggies (I used a big bag of mixed veggies from my freezer that I’d chopped last week after the farmers market, mixed peppers, onion, mange tout, asparagus and broccoli)
Quark (I used two heaped tablespoons)
Taco seasoning
90g shredded cheese (syn if not using as HeA allowance.  I used 3 servings of HeA but it serves 4 people.)
Pam/Frylight

Method:

Boil the pasta shells (until they are mostly cooked through but not falling apart).
While your shells are cooking, fry your mince (add a little salt, pepper, taco seasoning and garlic powder while it’s cooking), add in your veggies and cook until your mince is brown and your veggies are starting to soften.  When cooked, take off the heat and stir quark into the meat mix.
Line the bottom of an ovenproof dish (the kind you’d make lasagne in) with one tin of tomatoes (or, if you’re using a jar, coat the bottom of the dish with sauce) and sprinkle with taco seasoning.
Spoon the meat mixture into the pasta shells and lay them on top of the sauce.
Pour remaining tin of sauce over the shells, top with cheese and cook at 350F until cheese melts (around 10-15minutes)

They were yummy, aside from substituting the beef for chicken, I probably wouldn’t make any tweaks to them when I do them again.  I guess they were pretty much a ‘pantry’ dinner, all I needed to buy was the meat (cause my freezer supply had run out) and the rest I had at home already. It was also quick and easy to throw together, the most time consuming part was stuffing the taco shells!

There you have it folks, Mexican pasta!