Saffron Panna Cotta with Rhubarb Marmellata

Last Tuesday, I was reading a post on Cooked Books when I had to stop everything. You see, Rebecca mentioned that there’s a recipe archive on Babbo’s web site. Well, that set off a flurry of clicks, and I couldn’t get my printer flicked on fast enough. Babbo’s recipes are right there, ordered alphabetically, free for all. I don’t know how often the archive is updated or how complete it is or isn’t, but I quickly found several recipes to stack on top of my to-cook pile. The first of those was this panna cotta with rhubarb from Gina DePalma.

Part two of this story is that I had never before in my life cooked rhubarb. I have no excuse either, so it is clearly my Mom’s fault. She never cooked rhubarb that I remember, so I had no history with it at home. I’ve eaten it but never cooked it or had it at home. I had no idea what I was missing. It’s so easy, and it just makes a nice, thick sauce all by itself. And, now there’s sure to be rhubarb in my kitchen each time it’s in season. For this marmellata, it was chopped in one-quarter inch thick slices and cooked until soft with sugar and the scrapings of a vanilla bean. That was allowed to cool. For the panna cotta, gelatin sheets were softened while cream, sugar, lemon zest, and saffron threads were brought to a boil in a saucepan. That was left to steep for 10 minutes before the gelatin sheets were squeezed and added. Once the gelatin dissolved, the mixture was poured through a sieve, milk was added, and this was poured into ramekins. The ramekins were chilled until set.

To serve, the panna cotta was gracefully turned out of the ramekins, and the rhubarb marmellata was spooned on top. In reality, as I plopped the first serving out of its ramekin, it of course fell apart and broke into blobs on the plate. I had to try two more times before getting a photogenic one. All of this meant that we ended up with three desserts on plates for two people, and we didn’t mind that at all. I was feeling very full after dessert but happily so. I really love the unique flavor of saffron and with the lemon zest, the panna cotta was divine. The rhubarb topping which was thickened just enough all on its own, with its sweet and tart character and underlying vanilla, was a perfect match.