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Welcome to Thailand! or at least Pseudo-Thailand, an Italian dessert with a stunning Thai twist.   This dessert is silky and light, but dastardly rich all at the same time.  It may be served with Palm Seeds and Coconut Gel. These along with the Pandan Paste (or essence) can be found at asian supermarkets. 

This was the dessert we created for our first iatebrisbane.com featured flavours cook-up. I found it a little too sweet, next time I make it I’ll probably halve the amount of sugar. None of the girls here at iatebrisbane had come across Pandan until this recipe. Pandan paste is made from the leaves of the Pandanus plant, which I’ve seen growing usually quite close to the coast line. I took this photo of the Pandanus fruit when I was on our honeymoon in the Whitsundays. The scent is almost nutty, like almonds, and very fragrant. It can be used in cake and pudding recipes too. You may have seen Poh on Masterchef use it a couple of times.

Ingredients

3 sheets (5g each) leaf gelatine

100ml Milk

500ml thin cream

100g caster sugar

1/4 tsp pandan paste

1can palm seeds, drained, syrup reserved

1 jar coconut gel, drained, to serve

fresh mint sprigs, to serve

Method

1. Soak the gelatine sheets in a bowl of cold water for 5 minutes or until soft

2. Heat the milk in a saucepan over high heat until it almost comes to the boil

3. Drain the gelatine and squeeze out the excess water. Add to the hot milk and stir to dissolve.

4. Place the cream and sugar in a saucepan over high heat, stirring, until it comes to the boil.

5. Remove from the heat and stir in the pandan paste.

6. Pour in the milk mixture and stir well to combine.

7. Rinse out the 1/2 cup moulds with cold water, then drain them, (this prevents the mixture from sticking)

8. Divide the mixture between the moulds and refridgerate for at least 1.5 hours

9. Dip the base of each mould very briefly in warm water and turn out onto serving plates. Spoon over a few cubes of the coconut get, palm seeds and a little of the reserved palm seed syrup. Add a fresh mint sprig to each panna cotta and serve.

Serves 6

This recipe comes from the ABC’s delicious WICKED, Recipe: Meera Freeman, pg 34.