Revenge of the Killer Panna Cotta
This was going to be a recipe for a delicious panna cotta. Unfortunately, 'twas not to be... Instead it turned into a scene from a bad horror (or comedy) movie and an epic battle against a monstrous food elemental.
It started out innocently enough. Tomorrow, at work, we are celebrating "shavuot", which as far as I can make out is some kind of a dairy holiday, though why that is, I can't quite figure out (despite this helpful wikipedia article on the subject). For this holiday, everyone had to "volunteer" to bring some sort of food to work. I have a colleague who can't digest gluten, so I decided to make something that had no flour in it: panna cotta.
After doing some emergency shopping and walking home to some excellent music on the radio, I began my mission to make panna cotta. The sun was beginning to set, and there was a wonderful breeze wafting through the open windows of my apartment.
I found my recipe for panna cotta easily enough, and began mixing together the ingredients. Now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with how to make this deceptively dangerous stuff, but it involves simmering some hot cream on the stove and mixing it with the rest of the ingredients. This went fine.
I poured the stuff into a silicon mold. I lost maybe a tablespoon of the gloop by pouring badly. No biggy. The sun was setting fast, but I had the lights, so I could see just fine what I was doing.
And then it happened. If I had been in a roleplaying game, I would just have rolled a critical failure. (If you are unfamiliar with this term, please see the following link.)
Anyway, just when I had finished pouring the sweet, hot, milky mix into an innocent-looking form, suddenly the panna cotta ATTACKED! One wobble was all it took, and suddenly there was panna cotta all over the place. The stove was covered, and the substance oozed down the cupboard, and down my leg, covering my right foot, and dribbling over my sketchbook. It was an unstoppable, burning, gelatinous mess.
At this point, I surprised myself. No expletives emerged from my mouth - just a little "Oh no!"
The cat stared, probably wondering what the hell I was doing to myself, and before I could grab a rag, the power went out, and everything got very dark, very quickly.
After spending a few minutes fiddling with the fusebox in the dark, trying to decipher the squiggly Hebrew labels on each of the little switches, I finally managed to turn off the switch for the stove and get enough light to start the cleaning process.
Panna cotta has another property besides being hot when it's being made: it contains gelatin. So at this point, the floor, the stove, the cupboard, my trousers, my shirt, and my stripy right sock began to meld into one gloopy, burning mess. It was, to put it mildly, rather unpleasant.
I managed to clear the floor up, began to hand wash the shirt, nearly drowned my wristwatch in the process, and dried my sketchbook. Then I cleaned the cupboard, the stove, and in the process of rinsing the rag, nearly elbowed my glass teapot off the table. I thanked the Pannacottagod for small mercies at this point, refrigerated the dastardly panna cotta, and proceeded to bake a couple oven pancakes. (These came out fine, by the way. It seems I used up my bad luck on the panna cotta.)
The moral of the story is: PANNA COTTA IS DANGEROUS! Be ever vigilant when in its presence (unless it is in its cold, dormant state)! Do not take your eyes off the panna cotta! It is the more innocent (tastier) cousin of the Dungeons & Dragons jelly monster. It has little mercy, and it can strike at the slightest provocation. So be careful, and eat it before it eats you.
It started out innocently enough. Tomorrow, at work, we are celebrating "shavuot", which as far as I can make out is some kind of a dairy holiday, though why that is, I can't quite figure out (despite this helpful wikipedia article on the subject). For this holiday, everyone had to "volunteer" to bring some sort of food to work. I have a colleague who can't digest gluten, so I decided to make something that had no flour in it: panna cotta.
After doing some emergency shopping and walking home to some excellent music on the radio, I began my mission to make panna cotta. The sun was beginning to set, and there was a wonderful breeze wafting through the open windows of my apartment.
I found my recipe for panna cotta easily enough, and began mixing together the ingredients. Now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with how to make this deceptively dangerous stuff, but it involves simmering some hot cream on the stove and mixing it with the rest of the ingredients. This went fine.
I poured the stuff into a silicon mold. I lost maybe a tablespoon of the gloop by pouring badly. No biggy. The sun was setting fast, but I had the lights, so I could see just fine what I was doing.
And then it happened. If I had been in a roleplaying game, I would just have rolled a critical failure. (If you are unfamiliar with this term, please see the following link.)
Anyway, just when I had finished pouring the sweet, hot, milky mix into an innocent-looking form, suddenly the panna cotta ATTACKED! One wobble was all it took, and suddenly there was panna cotta all over the place. The stove was covered, and the substance oozed down the cupboard, and down my leg, covering my right foot, and dribbling over my sketchbook. It was an unstoppable, burning, gelatinous mess.
At this point, I surprised myself. No expletives emerged from my mouth - just a little "Oh no!"
The cat stared, probably wondering what the hell I was doing to myself, and before I could grab a rag, the power went out, and everything got very dark, very quickly.
After spending a few minutes fiddling with the fusebox in the dark, trying to decipher the squiggly Hebrew labels on each of the little switches, I finally managed to turn off the switch for the stove and get enough light to start the cleaning process.
Panna cotta has another property besides being hot when it's being made: it contains gelatin. So at this point, the floor, the stove, the cupboard, my trousers, my shirt, and my stripy right sock began to meld into one gloopy, burning mess. It was, to put it mildly, rather unpleasant.
I managed to clear the floor up, began to hand wash the shirt, nearly drowned my wristwatch in the process, and dried my sketchbook. Then I cleaned the cupboard, the stove, and in the process of rinsing the rag, nearly elbowed my glass teapot off the table. I thanked the Pannacottagod for small mercies at this point, refrigerated the dastardly panna cotta, and proceeded to bake a couple oven pancakes. (These came out fine, by the way. It seems I used up my bad luck on the panna cotta.)
The moral of the story is: PANNA COTTA IS DANGEROUS! Be ever vigilant when in its presence (unless it is in its cold, dormant state)! Do not take your eyes off the panna cotta! It is the more innocent (tastier) cousin of the Dungeons & Dragons jelly monster. It has little mercy, and it can strike at the slightest provocation. So be careful, and eat it before it eats you.
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