Vegan pastry-making

And just like in a fairy tale full of happy ending, here I am, talking about the experience at Identità Naturali 2013. Being in front of an audience interested in the vegan theme always stimulates in me a sense of surprise and pleasant stupor. Until a few years ago, as veg chefs we were left on the edge of the great restaurants’ kitchens, or belittled by the experts and critics of the great Italian cuisine. On the contrary, food researchers, doctors and health fanatics granted us much more interest and credit. This is why I’m sincerely grateful to all at Identità for the opportunity they’ve given me. This congress represents an admission, from the main entrance, to the magnificent world of international high cuisine.

This year I decided to show two vegan dessert recipes which will be part of my next book on vegan pastry-making, also published by Mondadori. I’ve tried to enrich the available possibilities. In other words, I’ve thought of proposing new ideas with regards to ingredients and old ones when it comes to form and presentation. With the help of Lisa Casali we’ve lingered on some non-refined sweeteners to create desserts that were a little less sweet but with some delicately decisive flavours and which could be ascribable to those traditions that are a point of reference, such as the ayurvedic one, as in the case of the Tiziano Terzani dessert.

So, instead of using white, refined sugar, we prefer to create desserts with more complex and less energizing sweeteners. Cereal malt, tropical sweeteners such as jaggery and date syrup become useful and hardly banal ingredients in this new pastry-making, full of flavour and health. Putting together good pastry-making and psycho-physical health is possible. To do so, however, it is necessary to understand well both the basic ingredients and some macro-guidelines on healthy food. 

TIZIANO TERZANI
With this dessert I wanted to pay a tribute to a great explorer of the inner landscapes. The shape of the dessert reminds one of the mountains, beloved by Tiziano and his wife Angela. The pineapple and saffron recall the tropical lands where he and his family lived for decades.

You will need a metal, rectangular 28x20 cm mould

Ingredients
for the saffron mimosa cake
220 g of Manitoba flour
30 g of fioretto corn flour
200 g of rice malt
140 of corn oil
140 g of natural pineapple juice
1 bag of cream of tartar
1 bag of saffron powder
the finely grated zest of a lemon (or lime)

100 g of pineapple pulp
100 g of frozen raspberries
1 of orange zest
lemon juice
50 g of red currants
aromatic herbs
rose petals

METHOD
1) Put the two flours in a bowl together with the sieved cream of tartar and the lemon zest. Pour the oil, juice and malt in a glass; add the saffron and mix well using a blender. Pour the liquid ingredients on the dry ones and work the dough for a few minutes, using a palette knife. Move the mixture into a previously oiled and floured mould, and bake it at 170°C for 22 minutes. Remove it from the oven. Once it is cooled completely, Remove the outside crust, and, using your hands, crumble the inside part so as to create a sort of golden sand. Put a side.
2) Simmer the raspberries with the zest for a couple of minutes. Blend and strain the sauce. Transfer it into a pipette and put a side.
3) Cut the pineapple into sticks of the same dimension and cook them in a non-stick pan so as to make them crispy outside. Pour some drops of lemon juice over them.
4) Pour a little raspberry sauce in the centre of the plate, add the pineapple and the saffron sand. Finish with the herbs, the flowers and the red currants.