A lighter winter on the table

With cold weather and shorter days, winter brings with it that longing for comfort food which – alas – eventually makes us feel heavier.

With some tricks we can easily “lighten the winter at  table” without feeling less satisfied.

Here are some suggestions:

At lunch:

Without a doubt, a dish particularly loved in the cold season is lasagne: meat sauce, béchamel sauce and egg pasta; How can we make this all-time favourite dish lighter without sacrificing taste

– For the béchamel sauce, when preparing the initial roux, replace the butter with the same amount of cream. Additionally, you can also lighten the recipe using low-fat milk instead of whole milk. Very important is then the use of spices: a little bit more of nutmeg will make the final taste particularly interesting.

– For the meat sauce, choose lean cuts and be generous with vegetables:, you will certainly get a much lighter result.

– For the sheets of pasta, we propose a completely original alternative; try to replace them with carasau bread: you will just need half the weight of the egg pasta for an even more creative taste.

Whereas, if your favourite first course for the winter is a nice risotto, try to cook it using oil instead of butter: you will find out that you need much less. A small knob of butter will ensure the final creaming, with the heat off. For a lighter version, if you appreciate a fresh sour note you can replace the final butter with a bit of sour soft cheese, such as cream cheese. A dredging of ginger can eventually give a greater feeling of lightness adding, at the same time, intensity to the final taste.

At teatime:

Even more than in the other seasons, the winter snack speaks of a steaming tea with maybe homemade biscuits.

For biscuits, besides not unduly exaggerating with fat, a useful tip is to reduce the total amount of sugar: if you put less in the dough while adding a little coarse-grained sugar on the surface, your taste buds will not notice!

Even for tea we can reduce sugar without giving up the pleasure of the flavour we love: a good idea is to put it together or replace it with a sweetener such as stevia, which has natural origin like sugar but, unlike it,  contains no calories.