[AE.Personal, AE.Food] Pannac at the Otta
If you follow me on Twitter -- and most of the people reading this do -- then you have probably inferred that my household is very much not on the "covid is over" train.
All of us here in the house and an elder of our extended family whose household has been in our bubble for reasons of necessity have managed to avoid contracting the virus through considerable caution and luck, but we also basically all have serious pre-existing conditions, and enough experience with disability and chronic illness to understand that there are a whole range of outcomes in between not getting sick at all and dying, and we're not looking to add any fun new symptoms to our daily lives.
I say all this by means of preface to a brief discussion of the fact that I have a new pandemic skill I'm working on, which is the making of cream custards thickened with gelatin.
Or to put it more plainly in the common parlance of the day: I'm coping with the panna cotta through panna cotta.
https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1494692026415255555
This is not the first bit of cookery I've turned to. Earlier on in the pandemic I leveled up my already not bad pancake skills, and also did a stint of pandemic baking in the form of soft pretzels.
But while I did each of those things a few times, I found them both a bit too intensive in terms of their impact on my energy levels and on the state of the kitchen to keep up as a habit.
I know pancakes are supposed to be "easy", as I've been told this by so many strangers when I talk about getting pancakes from a restaurant or packaged in frozen convenience form but... disability. I tend to get both flour and batter everywhere, and by the time I'm done making pancakes for three people who can each put away a lot of pancakes, my arms are pretty done in.
Which isn't to say that my early panna cotta experiments did not involve a lot of mess and messy dish creation. But each time I've been able to refine my approach slightly, cutting down on the number of utensils and measuring implements used, and getting less gelatinous spatter that needs to be cleaned up before it can set and turn gummy.
I think that's a big part of the appeal for me, honestly: how clean and quick and efficient can I get this? It's not cooking so much that I enjoy so much as metacooking. I'm all about the optimization.
I've been using two different recipes to get the base, neither of which is necessarily a purely "traditional" panna cotta preparation. I'm not saying that they aren't. I say that just in case there are any enthusiastic Italian dessert chefs or dessert appreciators who might take exception to the labeling of the recipes. I haven't looked into it that deeply myself, as at this juncture I'm not interested in the question. The key thing about them that drew me to them is that they are easy. If I want to, I can get fancier as I get better at what I'm doing.
Like, if I was interested in the purity of tradition, I wouldn't pick panna cotta, which are traditionally unmolded. The point of thickening with gelatin is that you're supposed to be able to plate them by separating them from the dish they set up in and inverting it, but I was introduced to it via a hotel catering service that served them in little ramekins and so I see no reason to undress my custard and make it dance for me before I dig in.
And on the subject of digging in, I like a dessert that is formed to a bowl, as it's far less likely to get away from me. (Again: disability.)
The first recipe I used was for a vanilla flavored custard, which I made once as a test batch and then a second time as a Valentine's treat, topped with berries and whipped cream:
Panna Cotta Recipe | Epicurious
Cool, creamy vanilla panna cotta is the simplest kind of dessert; it only needs a few minutes on the stove, and it sets all on its own in the refrigerator.
The other one came up when I was looking for recipes that use fewer dishes as well as for flavoring ideas, as it's coffee flavored. The first time I made it, I followed the recipe's flavor ingredient and suggested garnishes (or the closest available substitutes), but today I've tried using the basic cooking instructions but replacing the espresso with strawberry paste.
Espresso Panna Cotta Recipe | Giada De Laurentiis | Food Network
Get Espresso Panna Cotta Recipe from Food Network
I mostly double up the amounts and then pour the custard base into whatever dishes I have three or four of on hand that are deep enough. I've used dessert bowls, small Pyrex dishes, coffee mugs... the coffee mugs were great for holding the toppings in on Valentine's Day, but somehow I did not think to use them again when I made the coffee-infused version that had a bunch of toppings.
My current batch that is chilling in the fridge as I write this are in a set of three 2-cup Pyrex storage dishes I got specifically so I would always have a dish that I know is deep enough and that has its own cover so I don't have to try to get press-n-seal on and off it, particularly as my current method advises a periodic auxiliary stirrings during the first hour of chilling.
If anyone reading this happens to be thinking, "I would love to get in on this but I think I'd have the same problem rounding up dishes," here's an affiliate link to the ones I got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075WCTKP3. You don't have to get them on Amazon, of course, but you can use the link to get the product information. Really, though, any 2-cup (which is about half a liter) capacity container with a lid should work if you want to double the Giada recipe and then divide it three ways... which I suppose tells you that if you keep the amounts as-is then a 1-cup container would work.
Anyway, that's what's occupying me this late-afternoon-into-early-evening, and one of the things that's getting me through more generally.