yoghurt pannacotta with poached quince

yoghurt pannacotta with poached quince

20 May 2013

A few weeks ago a friend and I were having dinner at bills. For dessert my friend had pannacotta with roasted rhubarb and it looked delicious. As I don't eat cream I've never eaten pannacotta so I decided to hunt down a lower fat recipe, one that uses yoghurt.



This is the Joanne Weir recipe I used. Instead of cream, the recipe uses Greek yoghurt and milk flavoured with vanilla. The recipe is pretty foolproof and took no time to put together. To make sure it was silky smooth, I sieved the mixture into the moulds.



The Greek yoghurt I used was pretty tart and in the end I increased both the vanilla and sugar to counteract it's sharpness. I made half the recipe which yielded three 1/2 cup pannacottas with a little bit leftover.



I chilled the pannacottas in the fridge for a few hours and tried to unmould the little one, which turned out to be a bit of a challenge. After 3 goes, I finally unmoulded the pannacotta and had it for my dessert. 



So what did I think? I found the pannacotta quite bland and not sweet enough. I decided to pair the pannacotta with the oven poached quince I had in the fridge.



So what did I think of my chance pairing? Yum, yum and double yum. The quince was a perfect match. I'm going to play around with the recipe a little and see if I can make a summery tropical version using coconut milk.



You're going to see a little bit less of me during the coming months. Following a 3 month break I went back to full time work today. Blogging is a time consuming business and now that I'm back at work, I just don't have enough hours in my weekend to post twice weekly and write my monthly Delicious Bites column for decor8. 

Something had to give and whilst I'd love that to have been my day job, it does pay the bills. I hope you all understand.

See you all again next week,

Jillian

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oven poached quince

oven poached quince

15 May 2013

Autumn brings with it pears, quince and chestnuts. 



When I saw quince in the fruit market I brought a few home with me. I decided to poach them and dived into my copy of Stephanie Alexanders 'The Cooks Companion' for a recipe.



Quince are tough little numbers so you need a sharp knife to deal with them. Some people pot roast them whole but I find trying to remove the peel, seeds and core from the cooked quince a bit too fiddly for my liking.



Quince are inedible unless cooked and they need long slow cooking. As they cook they change colour from pale green to a rich ruby red. I initially cooked the quince for 2 hours and although they were cooked I wanted them to be ruby red, so I continued cooking them for a further 2 hours. You can see how the colour changes with cooking time.



Here's the recipe for you and it's beauty is in it's simplicity.
Stephanie's poached quince
6 quinces, washed and peeled
2.25 litres light sugar syrup
1 vanilla bean
juice of 1 lemon

To make the light sugar syrup, heat 2 parts water to 1 part sugar and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Preheat oven to 150°C. Cut quinces into quarters or sixths. Cut out cores and tie loosely in a piece of muslin. Put sugar syrup in a cast-iron pot with vanilla bean, lemon juice and muslin bag, then add quince. Cover tightly and bake in oven for at least 4 (and up to 8) hours until quince is deep red. Do not stir or the quince may break up.

Split the vanilla bean and scrape seeds into the syrup. I reduced the syrup over a medium heat for about 10 minutes. Cool the quince in the syrup.  



I can't really describe the taste of quince. It really is unique. So far I've eaten the poached fruit with some stewed apple and yoghurt and I've served it with  pannacotta. I found a recipe for quince cake that I'm dying to try so if I get round to making it, I'll share that with you.

See you all again soon,

Jillian

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