Gramercy Tavern Panna Cotta
- Adrianna
- Aug 6, 2018
- 2 min read
July 26 - Top of the list of things we wanted to make this summer was panna cotta, a delicious and smooth Italian dessert, gelatinous but in a good way. I made note anytime I came across a recipe for it, keeping them in mind, but when I found one in the Gramercy Tavern cookbook I knew that was the one. Gramercy Tavern is Brenda’s favorite restaurant and eating there was the first time I experienced really amazing food. To this day, I still think about the glazed duck dish that was so good it made me cry. But anyways, panna cotta.
I had no idea what I was doing going into this recipe, because really, who has casually made a panna cotta before? However, as I do every week, I figured it out as I went. To start, I roasted almonds in two different ways. The first half were “pebbled” in a food processor and left to roast in the oven for 20 minutes. These would be put into the actual panna cotta to supply the almond flavor. The other half of the almonds were roasted whole for only 15 minutes and would be used later as a topping.
Before heating or mixing anything, I put the gelatin in some of the milk to set. Then moving forward, I combined the pebbly almonds, the rest of the milk, cream, and sugar in a saucepan in order to boil the mixture and dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved, I removed it from the heat and added the milk and gelatin. Thirty minutes of John Mulaney stand up later, the mixture was set and ready to be finished. We blended it to make sure it was smooth, and then finely strained it into a large bowl, getting rid of any thick almond-y texture. According to the recipe, the bowl should be in an ice bath so that the final texture comes out smooth. I think you could get away without this step, but I trust them, and our final product turned out really good, so I’d recommend doing it. Once stirred and cooled, we filled our 4 oz containers and popped them in the fridge for a few hours until they were ready to eat.
Later that day, after a very fancy take-out dinner from Harry’s, we appropriately moved on to eat the panna cotta for dessert. I mixed halved cherries, toasted almonds, and some thyme together for the topping as a final touch. And wow it was good. The texture of the panna cotta was perfectly smooth and creamy, and the subtle almond flavor was perfect. The sweetness of the cherries balanced it out very nicely as well, and the roasted almonds added a bit of crunch. I even noticed the thyme playing a nice role, adding a slightly savory element. All I can say is that this recipe confirmed even more that the people at Gramercy Tavern really know what they’re doing.
(Here's a plain panna cotta recipe adapted from Gramercy Tavern's. Feel free to contact me to ask for the recipe for the almond version.)
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