Panna cotta is an Italian classic, so simple, straight and quick that it’s worth it making it!
It’s even one of my favourite dessert and as it is so difficult to find it well made in restaurants, I always prefer making it myself, at home.
It’s normally accompanied with red berries or chocolate, but this time I’ve tried a suggestion from Donna Hay: caramelized grapefruit.

For the panna cotta
600 ml of double cream
2,5 sheets of gelatin
20 g of vergeoise brune
50 g of sugar
5 cardamom pods
2 thin slices of lemon zest

Soak in cold water the gelatin sheets.
Bring to the boil the rest of the ingredients. take away from the fire, cover and let it infuse for 10 minutes.
Throw away cardamom pods and lemon zest, add the drained gelatin, stir.
Divide in 5 glasses or ramequines. Chill for four hours.

For the grapefruit
1 grapefruit
2 tablespoons of brown sugar

Cut all peel and pith from each grapefruit. Cut between membranes, releasing segments.
Add them to a pan with he sugar. Let it caramelize over high heat. Spoon it over the panna cotta and chill for another two hours.

That is what could happen in a normal household on a (sunny) Sunday morning, when you say to your (normally clever and wit) husband: “Dear, I’m going to take a shower. Can you watch the muffins in the oven in the mean while? I put the timer, when it rings take them out”.
I came out of the bathroom and the house was filled with a nice smell, but getting toward the kitchen, the smell was more towards burn than nice… And there they were: my muffins, half burned, still in the oven!!!
And all this because, as all of you understood since the cradle, cookbooks give ALWAYS the wrong timing, and because my dear French man was peacefully reading his wine notes…
So here they are: “Come as you are” muffins.

225 g of flour
1 package of chemical yeast
75 g of rolled oats
185 g of raisins
80 g f butter
4 table spoons of honey
2 egg
280 g of yoghurt

Preheat the oven at 180° C.
Melt butter and honey. Set aside and let it cool a little.
Mix all the dry ingredients. Make a wheel in the centre. Mix together eggs and yoghurt, add it to the dry ingredients altogether with butter and honey. Mix but do not over do, as you need lumps.
Spoon the mixture in a 12 muffins tin, covered with paper cups, and bake for 20 minutes.
Serve hot.

Recipe adapted from Muffins, Le cordon Bleu, Konemann, 1998.

P.S. Those muffins are dedicated to a dear expat friend: she loves muffins, she collected more than 80 muffin recipes through a meme and now she’s going to open her own muffin factory, aka no more time for blogging!

Hip hip hurrah for Nigella Lawson!
Pardon me my madness, but today in Italy is definitively spring (even 1 moth before is normally due), and there is a glorious sun in Milan: one of those rare day when the sky is blue and pollution seems to be blown away by some magical force…
So we wake up in a perfect mood and made pancakes! And Nigella suggests, in the Feast‘s chapter Breakfast, to make banana pancakes! And as I recently became addicted to bananas, why not?

For approximately 10 pancakes (it depends how big you make them…)
150 g of flour
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of chemical yeast
1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of sodium
200 ml of goat milk
50 ml of yoghurt
1 banana (very ripe)
1 egg

Measure all the ingredients and blend them in a food processor until you obtain a smooth batter.
Heat a teaspoon of vegetable oil in a heavy bottom non stick pan, clean it away with a pice of kitchen towel and add a bit of batter, something like a ladle full. Cook it until it bubbles, then turn it and let it cook for another 30 seconds.
Keep them hot while you are making the others.

I personally never tried a real American pancake, as I’ve never set foot in the States, but my husband says that Jamie Oliver’s version is more like what you eat in pancakes bar… I like Nigella’s too and the banana taste is very nice and subtle…

Sometimes I feel like an old maid (and I’m happily married!) or an old grandma: I like cooked apples…
I had a period in my file when I was cooking whole apples in the oven, and eat them warm, even two a day…
I know, it’s a bit decadent, but they are so good, so comfort, so sure, so soothing…
Peace to the world with cooked apples!

This time I peeled, cored and segmented apples and pears, add the juice of two lemons and the zest of one lemon, some rosemary springs, a piece of cinnamon and 3 table spoons of brown sugar. I let them cook until puréed…
Eat warm and feel decadent!