The aroma of warm cantarelle, freshly made and covered with a light dusting of sugar, represent a pleasant childhood memory for many people from Emilia Romagna. Cantarelle romagnole, a traditional Romagna dessert made with flour, water, and salt, for those who didn’t know is the regional version of the highly popular international pancake.
How to prepare the cantarelle according to Romagna tradition
Cantarelle, like any other recipe of rustic origin, have always been prepared with simple inexpensive ingredients that we can always find in our pantries. According to the original recipe to prepare them you pour some flour into a bowl, add a pinch of salt and gradually pour cold water (a little more than the weight of the flour), stirring with a whisk. At one time the flour came directly from the mill, nowadays you can use cake flour or, as we will see later, you can opt for a mix of different flours. Unlike pancakes cantarelle contain neither yeast nor eggs.
Once a smooth, soft and rather dense batter has been obtained, it’s poured with a ladle onto a hot plate (today a non-stick frying pan is suitable), to form discs of about 10 cm in diameter. The cooking process is similar to that of pancakes and requires that it be cooked well on both sides. In the meantime, pour a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a little caster sugar into a large plate or a large bowl, on which a first layer of cantarelle will be placed. Then continue with the cooking, adding various layers of seasoning between the pancakes. What you get is a humble but tasty dessert, unpretentious and fragrant, perfect for a quick hearty snack.
The many modern variants of the Romagna pancake
There is no Italian dish of rustic origin that hasn’t undergone variation, even in keeping with ingredients available at the time, which has given rise to personalized recipes, kept and handed down from generation to generation. Many people from Romagna like, for example, to add a pinch of bicarbonate soda to the dough or replace the milk with water to get even softer pancakes. Frequently yellow maize flour is introduced too which is often mixed with white flour. What is increasingly different with time from the traditional recipe is especially the final topping. Today many people replace icing sugar with caster sugar or, butter with extra virgin olive oil. There are also those who similarly to pancakes love to pour honey or maple syrup over their hot cantarelle or serve them with homemade jams and preserves such as fig or berry jam. To give this dessert an original touch whilst remaining faithful to the Emilia Romagna culinary tradition, you can garnish it with a few teaspoons of savor, a sort of jam originating in Modena, made with grape must and the addition of autumn fruits.
In short, this Emilian dessert is really quick and easy to make and can be adapted to one's own tastes. All that’s left to do is to decide whether to opt for the country recipe or to be adventurous and try inventing your own.