Dessert · Piedmont, northern Italy
Panna cotta
Sweetened cream set softly and served cold.
About the dish
Panna cotta means cooked cream in Italian. It is a cold dessert of sweetened cream set with gelatin, associated with Piedmont in northern Italy, and it became popular well beyond Italy in the late twentieth century.
Gelatin is first bloomed in cold water or milk, which lets it absorb liquid evenly so it dissolves without lumps. Cream, sometimes mixed with milk, is warmed with sugar and a split vanilla bean until steaming, then taken off the heat and the gelatin is stirred in until it dissolves. Boiling after the gelatin goes in can weaken it. The mixture is poured into molds or glasses and chilled for several hours.
The amount of gelatin is the whole art: just enough and the panna cotta holds its shape when turned out but trembles and melts on the tongue; too much and it turns rubbery. The flavor is pure richness and gentle sweetness, so it is often served with something sharp, such as a sauce of raspberries or other tart fruit, or with a dark caramel for a bitter contrast.
Written from general cooking knowledge, as background on a dish from the game’s recipe book. It is not a tested recipe.
The flavors it leans on
Panna cotta in Night Kitchen
In the game, Panna cotta is a dessert in the recipe book. A plate is named Panna cotta when it holds these cards and is cooked with exactly this technique, with at most one extra ingredient.
Ingredients
- Heavy cream
- Brown sugar
Technique
- Chill
How those cards taste
Cooked from just these cards for an average ticket, before tonight’s mood and quirks, it would please Gus (3 stars), Lou (3 stars) and Odile (2 stars) most.
“Sweet cream set cold, with something sharp on top. It wobbles like a brushed snare.”
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