Another question came in yesterday, asking what effect pasteurization has on cream, and more than that what effect ultra-pasteurization has. The answer is that any time you heat milk or cream up to any significant degree, you change its flavor. This results in a denaturing (science speak for “messing up”) of the whey proteins, which […]
READ ONSo what is it that makes cream so darn fabulous? I mean…technically. What’s so special about cream? Some argue that it’s cream’s texture that makes it so attractive to our senses. And indeed, cream’s texture is unique in the realm of food, often imitated in food science labs, but never quite duplicated. Cream has a […]
READ ONSomething about the pure delight of unadulterated cream, yes. So what’s with the buttermilk, then? Isn’t that turning the clock back to the days of yore, when microbes made cream tangy-tasting as a result of spoilage? I suppose it is, yes. But then as I also wrote this morning, the modern palate has become inured […]
READ ONOne misconception about panna cotta is that it must always be served turned-out, standing on its own like a flan. That to me presents a fundamental problem, which is to say, too much gelatin. My personal feeling is that panna cotta needn’t be terribly firm, just enough to give it a silky and elegant mouthfeel. […]
READ ONYou know, it’s easy to be blasé about cream. Top-quality, sweet, neutral-tasting cream is everywhere. In fact it’s fair to say it’s in too many places, just another garden-variety indulgence from the refrigerated dairy section. It wasn’t always so. Before, say, the mid-1800’s, if you were looking for a little cream to whip up and […]
READ ONUnknown. In fact not only do we not know “who”, we don’t even know “when”. Panna cotta almost certainly evolved from custard, which has a long, long history on the continent. However the fact that it’s thickened with gelatin means it can be no older than 200 years, because commercially-produced gelatin wasn’t around before then. […]
READ ONPanna cotta occupies its own special spot in the dessert world, as a custard that that’s not really a custard. Oh sure, it may look a bit like a custard, it may feel a bit like a custard in the mouth, but in the end it’s what we moderns call, rather unceremoniously, a “gelatin dessert”. […]
READ ONPanna cotta might translate literally into “cooked cream”, but if I were running the universe, it would mean something more like “cream-love’s paradise”. Rich but also delicate, it can be served as-is in Zen-like simplicity, or enhanced with other dairy-friendly flavors. Panna cotta hails from Piedmont, Italy, which in and of itself is interesting. Italians, […]
READ ONBefore I got bogged down — really only inconvenienced — by the weather last week, I was hoping to get a two-fer of Italian desserts in: biscotti and panna cotta. I thought it was kinda cool that they both had the word “cooked” in the name. Panna cotta is of course a very different thing […]
READ ONI learned that falling, frozen tree limbs are nothing to be messed around with. One imagines a tree limb as a thing that falls slowly, or at least gives one ample notice before it goes (lots of cracking and creaking, et al). Not so. A heavy, ice covered limb is on the ground practically before […]
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