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Panna Cotta

From Baking.

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A historical recipe

Baking.

Italy

Known as an Italian recipe, with similar versions prepared across other nations.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.

Cook safely

Keep children and pets away from the hob and the oven, and keep oven gloves and a lid within reach.

  • Boiling water and steam. Turn pan handles inward, away from the edge of the hob. Lift lids away from you, and pour hot water away from your body: steam burns too.
  • Sharp knives. Cut on a board that doesn't slip (a damp cloth under it helps), and curl the fingers of the hand that holds the food.

Method

  1. Panna cotta, which literally means “cooked cream,” has the rich, luxurious quality of a custard, but in fact, it’s not a custard;
  2. it’s a cream-based dessert thickened with gelatin.
  3. Some variations of panna cotta use milk products that are a little acidic, such as buttermilk, yogurt, or creme fraiche.
  4. Note that gelatin is an animal-based product, which means that this dessert is not suitable for vegetarians.
  5. The first step in making panna cotta is to hydrate the gelatin.
  6. Pour a portion of the milk into a bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over a broad surface area so that it will hydrate quickly and evenly.
  7. This step is called blooming.
  8. Gelatin cannot be hydrated in a warm liquid, so make sure the milk is cold or at least cool.
  9. Take the time to do this step carefully;
  10. if you splash the gelatin or don’t get it evenly distributed over the top of the milk, it may not become fully hydrated, and the final product will have bits of undissolved gelatin in it.
  11. It takes about 5 minutes to properly hydrate gelatin after you’ve got it evenly sprinkled over the top of the milk.
  12. During that time, you’ll see that the surface of the milk becomes very rippled.
  13. After a couple of minutes, you can gently cut the surface with a whisk to expose a little bit of new milk, again, to ensure that all the gelatin becomes equally hydrated.
  14. Next, dissolve the sugar into the cream in a saucepan.
  15. At this point, you might flavor the cream with a vanilla bean, coffee beans, cinnamon sticks, orange zest, or any type of fruit puree.
  16. You could even substitute fruit puree for some of the milk in this recipe.
  17. Bring the cream to a boil and pour it into the bloomed gelatin mixture.
  18. Stir it around so that it’s thoroughly dissolved.
  19. If you’re using flavoring extract, add that now, along with the reserved milk, to cool off the mixture more quickly.
  20. If the cream mixture is too hot when you pour it into a ramekin, it may separate into layers with the cream floating on top.
  21. Strain the mixture through a finemesh sieve and then pour it into dessert dishes or martini glasses.
  22. Refrigerate for several hours or even a day or two.

Plating

Cookware for this recipe

  • Saucepan
  • Baking dish
  • Mixing bowl
  • Whisk
  • Chef's knife
  • Grater
  • Wooden spoon
  • Sieve
Source not stated by archive.org
Credit

From Baking, printed page 56, digitised by the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/Baking

What was changed: Read by machine from the book's scanned text into ingredients and method. The title's capitals were tidied; spelling and scanning errors are left as they are.