Panna Cotta - first try

Panna Cotta was the competition topic of December from food and photography facebook group that I'm joining. Even I've never tried this food before, I thought it was just like fruit jelly I usually watched my grandma made. Thus, on my mind, it's kind of easy, LOL. Plus the event hosts also said the recipe was not hard at all, simple, easy, just make and succeed. Yeah, I heard it clearly, just make and succeed!

"Oh well, let see how people do the job. I'm not going to make it now, later maybe!" That was my thought after reading the contest rule. During a month, after observing all wonderful pictures from other members, I knew I was right to not join in the event, LOL. Those people are so good at food photography (at least to me!!!). I myself just have an old-age PnS (point and shoot) Samsung camera that I've been using for more than 6 years. Even whenever I turn the camera on, the shutters are not going to open without the assistance of my fingers. People said that the picture quality doesn't completely depend on camera. Well, in my case I guess it does, or at least for now.

Since yesterday, I have thought about making something special for the last date of the year 2011 and also the most special day to my dear wormdad. Something I can make easy without buying a lot of ingredients but still  looks pretty at the end. I first wanted to make Cream Puffs or Croissant. Too bad, I don't have any icing bags. Remember about the last time I tried to use some thick bags to replace icing bags and the result was nightmare, such a big waste of food 
I was like, "thinking, thinking and thinking , wait a second, how about Panna Cotta? Simple ingredients, simple recipe, pretty results, is it worth a try?" I guess it is since it was my choice and now is the post for it.

Actually, my post here is just to bookmark the date I first tried making Panna Cotta, it's not a post to show how pretty Panna Cotta is. To be honest, I have to tell you that my first attempt was failed. I guess I'm the only person failed at Panna Cotta then . Anyway, I got a lot of experiences on new cooking ingredients for Panna Cotta and I guess my next time will be just simply successful.

  

Here is the basic recipe I'm following, given by the event holder on facebook group: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2009/04/perfect-panna-cotta/. I just used a quarter or a third of sugar in the recipe though. 

I got failures this time because of these issues:

- Gelatin I bought didn't do the good job as it said. It said like one pack for 500ml liquid, but I guess I need to adjust a little bit for the next time. I got all colors mixing up even leaving the mixture in the fridge more than 4 hours! Yay!!!!!!

- I put yogurt to make the sour flavor. However, I forgot that the yogurt here in Canada is completely different from the one I knew. It gave me a hard to sift the residue at the end. That's not the worst, the worst is the yogurt always tended to be on top so all other colors were mixing up with white, such a big mess. 

Well, at least the final result is still edible , I guess that's the only thing I have. Gotta say WOW after eating though, it tastes amazingly good.

Here they are!

This is the bonus of Pan Cake Street Style, LOL. Still starts with Pan but looks completely different.

This is the related event I mentioned earlier in this post: http://www.lanvaobep.org/2011/12/tong-ket-cung-nau-cung-chup-anh-122011.html. 

(Don't compare those with mine! Yeah, I know what you mean after you look at my Panna Cotta and those, LOL!!!!)

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYBODY!