Low-carb cuisine

Pizza, pasta, risotto… enjoy all of your stodgy food favourites sans the sugar rush, thanks to recipes from new cookbook The Low Carb Italian Kitchen

The Mediterranean diet has long been lauded for its health-giving properties, with research reporting a positive impact on weight loss, heart and brain health, cancer prevention, and diabetes prevention. Even as other diet trends have come and gone, the Med diet has stayed steadfast as one of the top eating plans out there.

What makes it particularly healthy is its focus on plant-based foods and healthy fats. On a Med diet, you’ll be mostly consuming vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, nuts, seeds and pulses, plus olive oil and lean proteins such as fish or chicken. But when we talk about the Italian Mediterranean diet, we tend to think of high-carb foods such as pasta, pizzas and oil-soaked breads. Tasty? Sure. But aren’t they also full of starchy foods that could lead to a sugar crash? Not if you follow the recipes from Italian-food and low-carb specialists Katie and Giancarlo Caldesi. Leading advocates for the health benefits of a low-carb diet, they reveal how to make Italian recipes using only healthy ingredients in their new book The Low Carb Italian Kitchen (£15, Kyle Books). If you love pizza and pasta, you can still enjoy all of your Italian food favourites while managing your weight, health and energy levels. Read on for a preview of what’s on the menu…

LOW-CARB PIZZA

A Serving: makes 4 pizzas, approx 18cm Per pizza, tomato + ’nduja: 7.5g net carbs 13.8g fibre | 28.6g protein | 55g fat | 681 kcal Per pizza, bianco: 18g net carbs | 15.5g fibre | 25g protein | 43g fat | 604 kcal

Ingredients

• Olive oil, for greasing

• 1 quantity of low-carb dough

For the tomato sauce

• 160g passata or canned whole Italian plum tomatoes