Panna cotta

Before you start

• it sets 4h in the fridge, and overnight is better
• four small moulds, cups or glasses

Ingredients

Serves 4 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 320mlcream
• 250mlmilk
• 60gsugar
• 3dried gelatine leaves — platinum grade. Three leaves to this much liquid gives a wobble; four gives rubber
• 1vanilla pod — or a teaspoon of extract, stirred in off the heat
• 150gberries

Method

6 steps

1. soak · 6m

   Gelatine leaves in a bowl of COLD water until they go limp and floppy. Warm water starts dissolving them into the bowl instead of into the cream, and what is lost there never sets anything.

2. simmer · 8m

   Cream, milk, sugar and the split vanilla pod brought up only until it steams and shivers at the edge of the pan. It must not boil — boiling adds nothing and weakens what the gelatine can do.

3. fold · 3m

   Off the heat, leaves squeezed out hard and stirred in until there is no trace of them. Run the spoon along the bottom of the pan and feel for slivers: one undissolved piece sets as a lump in a single mould and nothing later fixes it.

4. rest · 20m walk away

   Strained into the moulds and left on the side to lose their heat before they go anywhere near the fridge.

5. rest · 4 hours walk away

   Covered, in the fridge. Four hours sets them; overnight sets them properly and they turn out more cleanly.

6. finish · 6m

   Berries crushed with a spoonful of sugar and left to go syrupy while the moulds are dipped for three seconds in hot water and turned out. It should tremble when the plate moves — one that stands up straight had a leaf more than it needed.