Mother's Day Dinner: Rosemary Pannacotta with Plum Sorbet

Well... how can you go without dessert on Mother's Day!?!?!? To prepare a big dinner, it is important that you choose a couple of dishes which you can prepare beforehand, so you don't run into panic on the actual day thinking that you're running out of time for preparation! And since the dinner menu was considered to be quite heavy, so I picked a couple of desserts that are quite light to palate! Rosemary pannacotta with plum sorbet and raspberry mousse. Why made two?!?!? Because my hubby doesn't eat any sorts of berries (fussy!) so I always try to sneak in a berry dessert when I have dinner parties, plus making a non-berry dessert as the alternate menu. 

When I left my old work last year, my team bought me Pier - the cook book! Wow... all the dishes inside the book looked fantastic, and very artistic!!! And most of the dishes required a lot of technique, ingredients and preparation. Probably 80% of the recipes in the book are 2-3 pages long! One day... I think one day I'll get around to it! But randomly, when I was flicking through it I saw this Rosemary Pannacotta with Blood Plum Granita - Creme Fraiche & Plum Sorbet which was comparatively easy, but different! Never had rosemary pannacotta before, usually it's either vanilla, white chocolate or dark chocolate! And to make this recipe even easier, I've cut it down to Rosemary Pannacotta with Plum Sorbet! Haha... It might not have as much texture as the original, but I thought it's still a very good combination!

Rosemary Pannacotta

Serves 4 

Ingredients:

4 gelatine sheets

280ml milk

2 heaped tsp caster sugar

1 rosemary sprig, leaves picked and chopped, plus extra to serve

280ml pouring cream

1. Soak the gelatine in a small bowl of iced water until softened. Remove from bowl and squeeze gently to drain excess water

2. Warm the milk, sugar and rosemary in a saucepan over low heat, stir to dissolve sugar. Remove from heat, cover with lid and let the rosemary to infuse for 15-20 min. 

3. Return the saucepan to heat and re-warm the milk. Add gelatine and stir to dissolve. 

4. Place the cream in a mixing bowl and strain the milk mixture through a fine sieve onto the cream. 

5. Pour into 4 glasses and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. 

Plum Sorbet (I didn't use the Pier recipe because it requires an ice-cream machine which I don't have =( so I used a raspberry sorbet recipe I've got and changed it to plum!)

Ingredients:

1 cup water

1 cup caster sugar

600g plum (after stone has been removed)

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 egg whites

1. Stir the water and sugar in small saucepan over heat, without boiling, until sugar dissolves; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, simmer, uncovered, without stirring, 5 minutes; cool.

2. Process the plum, juice and sugar syrup.

3. Push mixture through fine sieve into cake pan; discard seeds. Freeze for about 3 hours or until almost set. 

4. Chop the mixture coarsely. Process with egg whites until smooth. Return mixture to pan. Cover. Freeze until firm. 

When you're ready to serve, scoop a ball of plum sorbet to go on top of the pannacotta. The contrasting colour of the reddish pink and the white looks beautiful! The 'real' Pier recipe includes granita as well, which I think will add another layer of texture to it, but I'm satisfied with this '2-tier' dessert already! =P Will definitely try to do the granita next time! 

I quite like this rosemary flavoured pannacotta! It's different, and full of fresh herb flavour, which helps to freshen and spice up the dessert even further! I think I can do with a little less gelatine to make it more wobbly! The flavour of the plum sorbet was actually not very strong when compared with the rosemary, which I don't mind otherwise the two flavours will just be fighting! (Not sure whether the Pier recipe has a stronger plum flavour or not though) At the end I think this dessert still tasted wonderful with a smooth and silky texture!!! It might look better if I garnished it with either a leave of fresh mint or a small sprig of rosemary, but I didn't think about that when serving, therefore looking quite boring at the end, I'll definitely jazz it up next time!