© David Loftus
green tea and vanilla pannacotta with chocolate sauce
method
Pannacotta is a fantastic Italian dessert it basically means boiled cream. My recipe is half milk and half cream, so its not too heavy when it dissolves on your tongue. Ive used green tea to flavour it, which has no relevance to Italy but works so well, especially with the chocolate sauce.
Put the milk, vanilla pod and seeds, tea bags or tea and half the cream in a small pan and slowly simmer for about 10 minutes until reduced by a third. Remove from the heat and extract the tea bags (put the mixture through a sieve if youve used loose tea or your tea bags have burst). Squeeze out the gelatine, discarding the soaking water, then stir the gelatine into the tea mixture and leave to dissolve. Allow to cool a little, then place in the fridge, stirring occasionally until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Remove the vanilla pod.
Whip together the icing sugar and the remaining cream. Mix the two cream mixtures together. Divide into four metal moulds (small glasses or cappuccino cups also work well). Cover and chill for at least an hour.
Meanwhile, place the caster sugar, the water and the cocoa in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Take off the heat and stir in the broken chocolate. Stir until dissolved and warm briefly before serving.
To serve, sometimes I dip the mould or cup into some simmering water to loosen the pannacotta, then turn it out on to a plate and spoon the chocolate sauce around it, or especially if you feel the mixture is a bit wet you can simply serve the dessert in its cup with chocolate sauce poured over the top.
serves:
ingredients
100ml milk
1 vanilla pod, split and seeds removed
3 green tea bags or 2 heaped tablespoons of green tea
350ml double cream
1Ό leaves of beef gelatine, soaked in water
70g icing sugar
30g caster sugar
150ml water
1 level tablespoon cocoa powder
100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces