Something light and tasty from Italy

For me, panna cotta has always been something jelly-like, something…a bit boring I would say. I have never ordered it in a restaurant and I have never tried to prepare it. Prejudices I guess. And I don’t know where they came from. So, what made me to rethink my prejudices. Nami-nami called for cooking panna cottas together, and when many members showed their nice desserts and raved about its taste, I decided to try. I mean, it is literally cooked cream, what is there to jump about? It has history, okay. As you know, panna cotta comes from Italy. Traditionally the cream is very slowly cooked until reduced by 1/4-1/3. Then you should add gelatin. As you want it to be more creamy and soft than a regular jelly, you shouldn’t use a lot of it. 2 sheets for 500 ml of cream should give you the best result. So, prepare gelatin, stir it into the cream, pour the mixture it into dessert bowls and let cool in the fridge. Seems like an easy task, right?

Guess again. Mine did not come out that nice. The first one I made tasted like strawberries as it was suppose to, was creamy and all, but something wasn’t right. I think it didn’t looked as good as I wasexpecting. And I blame my ramekins, because it was oh so hard to get the panna cottasout of them. As if they decided to be stuck in the ramekins and laughed at my face when I tried my hardest to get them out. And also, I guess I should have pour the strawberry puree through strainer like the recipe suggested, to get rid of the seeds. It would have made the panna cotta more tasty.

Here’s the recipe:

400 g strawberries

200 ml milk
200 ml whipping cream
4 tbsp sugar
2 sheets gelatin
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3 tbsp honey

 

# Puree 250 g strawberries in processor until smooth. Pour puree through strainer, pressing with rubber spatula to extract as much puree as possible; reserve strained puree and discard seeds.

# Whisk milk, whipping cream and sugar in a heavy saucepan. 

# Soak gelatin sheets in cold water, let stand until gelatin softens, about 5 minutes. Drain the excess water and place the gelatin into the cream-and-milk mixture.

# Whisk mixture constantly over very low heat just until gelatin dissolves and mixture is lukewarm, about 3 minutes (do not boil). Remove from heat.

# Whisk in pureed strawberries and vanilla extract. Divide mixture among six small or four big ramekins or custard cups. Refrigerate until panna cotta is set. 

For the sauce, I sliced some strawberries with the egg cutter (very useful invention) and placed them into a small bowl. Added some liquid honey and let it set at room temperature for about 20 minutes.

When ready to serve, run small sharp knife between panna cotta and ramekins  to loosen. Dip bottom of ramekins into bowl of hot water for a few secons. Invert each panna cotta onto plate, shaking gently to unmold. Spoon strawberry-honey mixture over and serve.

So what went wrong. Nothing much I think, only that I used very stupid ramekins and it was very difficult to get the panna cotta out. The recipe suggested to hold the bottom of the ramenkins in hot water for 30 sekonds and that’s what I did. Way too long of course, because the panna cotta started melting, as you can see from the picture. Stupid me.

The second time I used different kind of bowls which I got through a lucky chance. You see, there were some sunny days in Belgium. Heaven. And we went to the seaside and enjoyed the kite show. Of course one has to buy some ice cream at the seaside and that’s what we did. They sold the ice cream in plastic cups. Not very environmental friendly, huh? People coming, buying two balls of ice cream, then throwing the cups somewhere near the trash cans, and after an hour going to buy another bowl. What I did, was that I brought the cups home with me. Perfect for panna cottas, I thought. Actually, not that perfect because they were rather big…but at the same time it was super easy to get the panna cottas out of them, no need to dip it into hot water, they just slided out perfectly.

I tried this recipe:

500 ml single cream (I used 20% fat)

5 tbsp icing sugar

100 g white chocolate, chopped

50 ml water

2.5 gelatin sheets

2 perfectly ripe peaches

 

The original version suggest to place thin apricot slices into the bottom. I used canned apricots and somehow couldn’t cut the right sized slices and decided to fill the bottom of the dish with small apricot cubes. What and excellent idea I thought and congratulated myself in my mind. But it was all wrong. After I poured the cream over perfectly placed apricots, the apricots decided to arise on top. Very unevenly. You can imagine the look in my face. So much for panna cotta. It is going to be an apricot jelly.

So, I don’t know, you can try placing apricot slices into the bottom of the dishes and see how it comes out. And let me know. Now to the cream:

# Place the icing sugar and the cream in a saucepan and simmer over medium heat until slightly reduced.

# Add the white chocolate, and stir until smooth.

# Meanwhile, soak the gelatin sheets in cold water. Drain and place them into 50 ml hot water and stir until gelatin dissolves. Add carefully to the cream mixture. Simmer for a minute.

# Pour the panna cotta mixture over the peaches, and place in fridge until set. When it’s time to serve, loosen the edges and invert the molds over a plate.

For the sauce I placedchopped apricots and some raisins into a saucepan. Drizzled some honey on top and simmered for a couple of minutes. Cooled and served with set panna cotta (or whatever this dish is called).

After those adventures I found this page which gives you some tips on how to do a perfect panna cotta. Of course you only find the best sites and best information AFTER you think you have tried everything. But at least the next time I am smarter. And maybe it helps some of you as well.

First of all – use sheet gelatin. The quality of the granulated gelatin varies but is usually lower than the quality of the gelatin sheets. The powder can contain a high amount of broken protein which means they will create uneven stronger and weaker gels. So, with the powder, you might end up with a panna cotta which is soft on one side and firm on the other side. You shouldn’t have this problem with the sheet gelatin. Plain and simple, the powder gelatin is inconsistent.

Secondly, once you have stirred the dissolved gelatin into the cream, you should let it cool until at least room temperature, for about 1-2 hours. If you place the warm cream into dessert dishes and immediately into the fridge, the protein chains bond to each other immediately, and randomly, causing bulky and weak cross sections. With these weak bonds, the gelatin will progressively continue to firm over a period of time, thus the texture you gained the first day will be softer than the texture you have in 3 days. For example, you’ll make 3 bowls of panna cotta and place them into the fridge, immediately. And for the next three days you’ll eat one dish every evening. The one you’ll eat at the end, is the most firm. But ideally you would like your panna cotta to taste the same regardless of how many days it has been in the fridge, right? By cooling the gelatin slowly, at room temperature, the proteins are allowed to mingle with each other, forming a tighter and more structured bonds and as a result you’ll have a panna cotta which will taste the same tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

This post was actually very informative for me, so I suggest you to read it in case you are interested in perfecting your panna cotta. First thing to notice – it takes hours to prepare a perfect panna cotta. Not at all that easy as I thought at the beginning!