I have cooked panna cotta a few times for various courses at the farm and it always goes down a treat. It’s simple to prepare and is the ideal pudding for serving with seasonal accompaniments such as poached rhubarb or a vibrant, fresh raspberry coulis. So I decided to offer it as one of the pudding choices at our recent pop-up dinner. I normally pour the cooked cream into ramekins so the panna cotta can be turned out onto a plate but this time, I did them in bulbous glasses with some little cinnamon shortbread hearts (it was a Valentine’s dinner after all) and some cape gooseberries set in hard caramel, which look like beautiful marbles and make a very elegant and delicious adornment. (I will post details of how to make them in a separate blog).
HONEY PANNA COTTA
Serves 6
- 600ml double cream
- 200ml semi-skimmed milk
- 75g Wye Valley clear honey (plus a little extra for serving)
- 50g caster sugar
- 1 vanilla pod
- 6 fine gelatine leaves (e.g. Costa or Dr. Oetker)
- - Soak the gelatine leaves in a bowl of cold water for a few minutes
- - Meanwhile, put the cream, milk, honey and sugar into a saucepan
- - Slice open the vanilla pod lengthways, scrape out the vanilla seeds and add the seeds and the pod to the contents of the saucepan
- - Place the saucepan over a medium heat and bring to the boil then remove from the heat and discard the vanilla pod
- - Squeeze out the gelatine leaves and stir into the cream mixture until dissolved
- - Pour the cream mixture through a sieve into a jug
- - Divide the mixture equally between 6 ramekin dishes or dariole moulds (or heatproof glasses if you are not planning on turning them out)
- - Leave to cool then refrigerate for at least 4 hours until set
- - To serve, dip the base of each ramekin into a bowl of hot water for a few seconds, loosen around the inside edge with a small, flexible knife then turn out onto plates
- - Drizzle with a little extra honey
