Panna Cotta
(traditional Piemontese dessert, literally meaning “cooked cream”)
2 cups heavy cream,
1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon unflavored powdered gelatin
2 tablespoons of cold filtered water
1 vanilla bean pod
In a saucepan, combine the gelatin and water and let stand for a couple minutes. Heat the water-gelatin mixture over low heat until dissolved, then remove from the heat. In another saucepan (this one a bit larger), combine the cream, milk, and sugar, and bring to a boil, stirring incessantly. Remove from the heat, stir in the gelatin mixture and, with the back of a knife, scrape in the delightful inner contents of the vanilla bean pod. Stir. Divide the mixture into 8 half-cup ramekins (or 4 one-cup ramekins). Allow to cool at room temperature and chill for six hours or overnight. To serve, immerse the ramekin bottoms in a bowl of hot water for a few seconds. Run a knife along the edges of the panna cotta and invert the ramekin onto a plate. Serve with your favorite fruit, caramel, or wild flight of fancy.
Matthew Gavin Frank was born and raised in Chicago. Bitten by the food, wine, and travel bug, he left home at age seventeen, embracing the vagabond lifestyle that often lent itself to work in the restaurant industry. He ran a tiny breakfast joint in Juneau, Alaska, worked the Barolo wine harvest in Italy’s Piedmont, sautéed hog snapper hung-over in Key West, designed multiple degustation menus for Julia Roberts’s private parties in Taos, New Mexico, served as a sommelier for Chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand in Chicago, and assisted Chef Charlie Trotter with his Green Kitchen cooking demonstration at the Slow Food Nation 2008 event in San Francisco. He returned to academia and received his MFA in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction from Arizona State University. He taught creative writing to undergraduates in Phoenix, Arizona, and poetry to soldiers and their families near Fort Drum in upstate New York on the Canadian border.
