Panna Cotta with Wild Berry Sauce

I haven't really posted many desserts to this blog because I've been focusing on dinners, but this one was so great that I don't want to forget how to make it. Panna cotta is a traditional Italian dessert from the Tuscany region. Panna means "cream" and cotta means "cooked", so this is a recipe for cooked cream. I know that may not sound yummy, but think flan or custard and you'll get close. When we visited Italy, this was one of my favorite desserts. It is also very easy, so I will be making this more frequently at home.

Let's Get Started

In order to make this recipe vegetarian, you have to find vegetarian unflavored gelatin, which I found at Andy's Market in Sebastopol for $1.89. Any unflavored gelatin will do if you don't care about what it's made of. (If you don't know what it's made of, google it.)

To make the panna cotta, put 1/2 cup cold water in a metal bowl and sprinkle 4 teaspoons gelatin on top of it. Let it stand for about 10 minutes. Put the bowl into a pan of simmering water to melt the gelatin entirely, about a minute or two. Split one vanilla bean lengthwise, and scrape out the seeds. In another pan, combine 4 cups cream, 1 cup sugar, and the seeds from the vanilla beans. Bring the cream mixture to a boil and then simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and mix the gelatin into the cream. Whisk until well blended. Pour the cream mixture into individual serving dishes (I used 1/2 cup ramekins), allow to cool, and then refrigerate. To serve, loosen the panna cotta from the dish using a rubber scraper. Turn out onto small plates. Serve with mixed berry sauce.

To make the berry sauce, mix 4 cups wild berries (raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, etc.) with 1/3 cup sugar in a pan large enough to hold them. Let the sugar sit on the berries long enough for them to start releasing their juices. Boil the berry-sugar mixture for about 5 minutes. Puree half the mixture and stir it back into the other berries. Cool completely. Refrigerate any unused portion.

This dessert is simple, elegant, delicious, and easy. Go for a long walk after dinner to burn some of the calories. :-)

TIP: Rather than discarding the vanilla bean after you've scraped out the seeds, put it in a plastic container with 4-6 cups sugar. Leave it to infuse the sugar. After a few days, you will have lovely, gourmet vanilla-sugar to use in everything from coffee to desserts.

Approximate cost to prepare

4 cups cream - $6.00 ($8.00 for organic)

4 t. unflavored gelatin - $1.90

1 cup sugar - $.40

1 vanilla bean - $3.00

4 cups mixed berries - $4.00 ?

1/3 cup sugar - $.15

TOTAL for 10 - 12 desserts - $15.45

Lemon Granita (with a special winter twist)

I recently made lemon granita with some friends on our "Homemade Italian Pizza" night. Granita is a fruit ice that originated in southern Italy. We made ours with the meyer lemons from my tree.

While I was up at Lake Tahoe for

spring break, I had a lot of lemons I needed to process. I used the rinds for making limoncello (an Italian lemon liqueur), and that meant I had lots of juice to use.

It's very simple. Here's how you do it.

Combine 1 and 1/4 cups sugar with 2 cups water in a medium sauce pan. Stir until the sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Boil the s

ugar water for 5 minutes. Add 1 cup lemon juice and 1 T. grated lemon zest. Return to a boil and boil for 3 more minutes. Remove from the heat and cool completely. This can be stored in the fridge for a day or two until you're ready to freeze it.

Put a metal pan in the freezer to chill for at least 10 minutes. Pour in the cooled syrup and place the pan back in the freezer. After 2 hours, scrape the partially frozen mixture with a fork to break up the crystals. Put the mixture back in the freezer for 2 more hours (or more). Mix with a fork until slushy. Serve with mint garnish.

The rest of the story

While I was up at Tahoe, the mixture hadn't completely frozen by the time we were ready for dessert. We ate a spoonful, which was a little too syrupy, and realized that we had

the perfect ingredient sitting just outside our door. I scooped up a small bowlful of freshly fallen snow, spooned the partially frozen granita syrup over the top, mixed it in, and voila! It was perfect. It was like a lemon snow cone or slushy - very flavorful and exactly the right texture!