New vegan pastry: the tart with basil and chilli by chef Maurizio De Pasquale

Chef Maurizio De Pasquale points the way to a new pastry concept that combines flavor and health by replacing sugars and fats with alternative ingredients

What once seemed like the exercise of a few inspired lovers of a poetic environmentalism devoted to the balance of nature has now become a real emergency that humanity must urgently and heavily deal with. Indeed, one of the fundamental problems facing the immediate future of countries all over the world is that of adapt the availability of food resources to the needs of the demographic increase of the world population. The FAO data offer a gloomy picture of the problem: only 20-22% of the population feeds sufficiently or healthily and abundantly, 28-30% is fed on average and about 50% suffer from hunger and are subject to to periodic famines.

Not enough: every year, one third of all food produced for human consumption is wasted. The phenomenon mainly concerns rich countries where a large part of still good food is wasted directly by consumers. But another huge part of food is wasted throughout the food production process from agricultural production to processing, sale and preservation of food.

The problem it is not only of quantity but also of quality of what you eat. There welfare society seems intent on gratify yourself only with a protein and glycemic overabundance of one's food, all to the detriment of the internal balance necessary for the body to live for a long time. Proof of this is the enormous diffusion of metabolic diseases that has been recorded in recent decades. According to data reported in the Lancet medical journal, adult patients globally rose from 108 to 422 million between 1980 and 2014. The latest report from the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimates that diabetes affected 2019 million people between the ages of 463 and 20 in 79 (slightly more male than female). In parallel is in relevant the obesity figure also increased. According to a report by Osservasalute more than a third of the Italian adult population (35,3%) is overweight, while one in ten people is obese (9,8%); and overall, 45,1% of subjects aged ≥18 years are overweight.

Maurizio De Pasquale pastry chef who approaches food first of all from the point of view of the culture of nutrition applying it to the pleasant and gratifying effect on the palate, to the problem of food resources and correct and healthy nutrition, he has dedicated the studies of a lifetime which have led him to be required today both nationally and internationally as an expert in business development in the Food & Fintech sector, and food business consultancy.

Of economic-financial extraction, De Pasquale, pastry and bakery teacher, he specialized, in particular, on a scientific and practical level, in gluten free/healthy food and food intolerances, fermentative activities (leavened and large leavened products), and in the specific study and application of spontaneous leavening activities. Lastly especially carry on studies and research on the application of vegetable ingredients in confectionery. In short, a true authority on the subject.

“The link between people, society and the planet - he says - will also be strengthened in the coming years by the ways in which food is produced and used. Today, for example, we are talking about sustainability and circularity in the food sector".

Creativity, elegance and rigor are all concepts that for De Pasquale in the pastry shop must blend with each other with an eye always attentive to healthiness. "There pastry shop – observes the Chef – today he is repeating what has already happened in the kitchen, working with less salt, less sugar, less fat and subtracting all those artifices that mask the real flavors of the past. In the pastry shop, working by subtraction is not easy. It requires study and continuous trials”.

What De Pasquale invites you to do is use fruit and vegetables not only as a garnish, but as real ingredients that can optimally and healthily replace sugars and fats. “The construction of a sweet must be harmony, movement, proportions, structures and textures. Only the combination of all these concepts makes an exceptional sweet from a good sweet. Let's not forget that pastry is also chemistry and physics and that pinch of personal philosophy makes a dessert unique. That said, if we think that the ingredient is the matrix that makes pastry work, we pastry chefs must increasingly push the use of alternative ingredients and extract their individual potential. Among other things theelimination of ingredients of animal origin which are covering in terms of taste gives us the opportunity to perceive the aromatic aspects more closely of nature itself.

We find all of this in the “Fruttata” recipe that the Chef offers to Mondo Food readers as a different sensory experience through the combination of fruit, aromatic herbs and spices that are often only used in the world of cooking.