Super healthy chocolate cake aka wacky cake (no eggs, butter, dairy and ... chocolate)

Making an healthy yet delicious cake - and an healthy dish in general - is sometimes easier than one could think. 

No need to find particular or exotic products, or to use substitutes for regular (and unhealthy maybe) ingredients, or to search for innovative recipes developed and tested by gurus of healthy eating. 

All you need are few staple, cheap ingredients available even in the pantry of cooking-hating people and - here is the real surprise - an old, often forgotten and underrated recipe, developed when people had access to a much more limited number of food items than nowadays, and some products that we can have everyday (and often try to limit for healthy reasons, like meat or cheese) could be eaten just once in a while or reserved only for special occasions (think chocolate or coffee). 

Due to the scarcity of available ingredients, or to their high price, people were forced to be creative and inventive in order to develop"smart" recipes able to transform few basics products into tasty and satisfying dishes, some of which imitating or trying to reproduce richer and expensive ones.

Fettuccine with kale and almond pesto

I want to share this recipe, that I much loved, before the kale season ends.
Luckily kale is still available at the Farmers Market on the Terrace, and is still good and tender. I saw it this morning (though I didn't buy as I like to alternate my veggies throughout the month), and hope to find it again next week.

It is a bit weird to me but, at this time of the year, when I go on my weekly shopping trip to the market I can buy fresh, local kale and other vegetables that, from an Italian point of view, are typical of winter (like cauliflower, broccoli, fennel or cabbage) as well as ripe, juicy, tasty tomatoes - but also peppers, eggplants and zucchini - that in Italy is possible to find only in the middle of summer. Such a wide range of vegetables available at the same time gives me the possibility to make, in the same week, recipes that in Italy (and in Europe in general) I would make in January or February and others more typical of the summer season.
This week for example I made this kale pesto (the rest of the kale was braised with garlic, chili and extra virgin olive oil and eaten as a side dish) and a tomato sauce like the one my mother uses to make in August and preserve for the winter.  But I also cooked leeks, and beetroots, and green beans, not to mention all the different varieties of salads I had (lettuce, different types of rocket and other tasty varieties whose name is still obscure to me).
I'm getting used to this diversity and just love it!

Cantucci (Italian almond biscotti)

If you travel to the Italian region of Tuscany, you'll likely end most of your meals - especially if consumed in places where regional food is served, like trattoria, osteria, agriturismo - with some cantucci (or cantuccini), crunchy almond cookies usually served along with coffee, often with a glass of vin santo, a sweet wine perfect for dunking.

Cantucci are in fact the most renowned and representative sweet of the whole Tuscany, and in particular of the city of Prato where the original recipe was developed in 1858 by the pastry chef Antonio Mattei; due to their origin these cookies are also known as Biscotti di Prato. The 19th century original recipe for cantucci included not only almonds but also pine nuts and did not have any raising agents or butter, something that differs from almost all modern recipes.

The peculiarity of these cookies is the double baking process: in fact they are first shaped into a sort of flat log, which is baked then cut into thick slices and baked again, until dry and crunchy. 

Fennel, feta and pomegranate salad

Fennel is a vegetable that I like but don't buy and prepare very often because it's not much appreciated by the rest of the family: my son eats very few types of vegetables - excluding potato, or better fries, I would say he has only cucumbers, tomatoes (preferably on pasta as a sauce) and not much more - while my husband, who is a vegetables lover, prefers anyway other varieties.
In spite of this, especially when it's in season (by the way now at the Farmers Market it's still possible to find some good fennel), I buy it once in a while. Because, even if I know several persons who do not like fennel - I don't know, maybe it's a coincidence - I appreciate its aromatic, lightly sweet taste as well as the crunchy texture: to preserve both characteristics I like it steamed for few minutes, just until the color begins to change, and served just with extra virgin olive oil.
But it is also good raw in salads, finely sliced or chopped, in soups, or roasted, sauteed, baked as a side dish; and it is also delicious when combined with other ingredients to make more complex, rich and nutritious dishes, like savory pies and tarts, or baked gratin (in a popular Italian recipe boiled fennel are baked with bechamel, parmigiano or another grated cheese and, optionally, prosciutto or ham), or stuffed veggies with meat or cheese, or even battered and deep-fried.
The recipes I prefer are anyway those in which fennel is not cooked for a long time or overwhelmed by other ingredients or condiments; in particular I like the combination with ingredients able to enhance and complement to fennel peculiar flavor.

Digestive biscuits

I particularly love making (and eating also) cookies! And the number of recipes for cookies published on the blog so far are a clear demonstration of this passion of mine.
Excluding few types that I really don't like, I hardly can say no to a cookie, be it simple or of a rich and more sophisticated variety.

I'm not a big fan of store bought cookies (indeed not only cookies); as I have already said in previous posts, two are the main reasons for which, when possible, I prefer to make from scratch as many foods as possible: the first is that it is not possible to know the quality and origin of the ingredients used in industrial stuff and the second is the presence, in all store bought products, of additives (only few of which are necessary for hygienic or conservation reasons) and flavors, in most cases artificial (that usually taste good but are not the real, natural flavor of what we are eating).
Anyway there are few industrial products that I continue to buy, because I like them no matter what they are made of. And one of these are Digestive biscuits. I've always liked their rustic texture, as well as the sweet-savory taste: simple things can sometimes be very pleasant and enjoyable.
But recently I started thinking of making them on my own: considering how simple they seem to be, they are probably also easy to make at home, I thought. And I was right.

Focaccia with cherry tomatoes

I find the science of making bread very fascinating. 

And somehow poetic is the Italian expression used to call it, "arte bianca" meaning "the white art", where white obviously refers to the color of flour (at least the type most commonly used ) while the word art emphasizes how valuable and noble this activity is.

Even if I have been cooking and baking for many years, only recently I started practicing in making bread and similar baked goods. The reason of this late approach to this field is that I was somehow scared to try: I thought that making bread was a complicated job, just for experts, and I also considered almost necessary to have an electric mixer.

But then, a couple of years ago, I finally found the courage to try. To make it easier (and don't risk much) I started with one of the several possible versions of the so called no-knead-bread, where most of the work is made by yeast and time. Luckily results were satisfying enough after the very first attempts - in fact, in case of initial failures, I am not sure whether I would have continued making bread - so that now I bake on my own most of the bread, as well as other baked goods, we have at home. And to be honest, eating so often homemade bread I've become much more demanding and selective when it comes to buy it from shops (and there aren't many shop-bought breads that we really like now).

Chocolate Chantilly (two ingredients chocolate mousse)

The recipe for this chocolate mousse had been in my "must try" list for quite a long time but I hadn't tried before, probably because I had always given priority to more complicated, challenging new desserts so as to learn and master new techniques and basics in pastry-making. And I regret I didn't make it before! Because the technique behind this mousse - as it is actually more a basic technique for handling chocolate than a real recipe - leads to an absolutely amazing result, even more surprising considering that it requires just two ingredients (one of which is water), a whisk (an electric mixer makes everything quicker but it's not strictly necessary), a pan, a couple of bowls, and not more than fifteen minutes time. And it is one-hundred-percent impossible to make it wrong: should you make any mistake there is a way to fix it; actually, to be precise, you can always go back to the first step and make everything again from the beginning. 

What you get at the end is an airy, soft, creamy, super chocolatey mousse that, for real chocolate lovers, tastes even better than a traditional chocolate mousse, as there is no other ingredient (cream and / or eggs) to alter the natural flavor of chocolate. It can be served as it is, or topped/paired with whatever you like (whipped cream, fresh or dried fruit, nuts, cocoa nibs), or even used like a ganache, for filling tarts and tartlets, cakes, cupcakes or other baked goods. Interesting, isn't it?