Fruit, Yogurt, and Gelatin

A 1937 Cox-Gelatin booklet brough to my mind the fruity and refreshing yogurt cream my mother used to make all the time. We didn't know then that it was actually a yogurt panna cotta(!)

We wish you all a very happy May!

It is traditional on Mayday to make a flower wreath and hang it over the door, but, although we still have a wealth of wild and cultivated flowers in and around the garden, it was drizzling yesterday and very windy on Kea so we didn’t feel the urge to make a wreath.

This is an old photo, the best in my archives. Note that Dimitris Karatzas, the boy pictured, is now the chef/owner of Navagos, a very successful summer tavern on Astypalaia, the beautiful island of the Dodecanese.

I plan to explore and share with you more vintage recipes from the booklet

I found this 1937 leaflet among the vintage cookbooks for sale during the Oxford Symposium, and although gelées of any kind are not my favorite desserts, I bought it for just £6.

I was mainly attracted by the cover, a fine example of 1930’ies Art Nouveaux design: I loved the letters, the Edinburgh castle gravure, and the other iconic buildings of the Scottish city I love! Note that Cox company no longer exists, but on eBay I found boxes of Cox gelatine for £18 (!)

My not very successful attempt to make a layered panna cotta and fruit cream.

The booklet was sitting on my desk for over a year before I opened it. Reading through, I stopped at the various custard and blanc mange recipes —note that quantities of liquid are in ‘gill’— and suddenly I remembered the fruity yaourtokrema (yogurt cream) that my mother used to whip-up all the time, using packages of artificially fruit-flavored, and colored gelatin.

She would mix the flavored gelatin with the yogurt and cream, so the resulting pinkish panna cotta wasn’t particularly attractive.

I opted for a more time-consuming layered cream that I prepared using simple, plain gelatin for the panna cotta yogurt mixture, and a strawberry-flavored package, together with chopped fruit and some gin for the fruit layer.

I cooled the leftover fruit gelée adding plenty of chopped strawberries and frozen raspberries in a square bowl, then cut it in half to serve, as I wanted to use this oval little plate…

The gelatin packages my mother used still exist on the shelves of the Kea supermarkets. The only difference is that now the red fruit mix is ‘sugar-free’ but does contain a fair amount of artificial sweetening… Fortunately my ‘cream’ has plenty of yogurt, along with the strawberries that are still more sour than sweet, so the result was not bad at all.

Layered Yogurt Panna Cotta and Strawberry Gelée

Based on the Kitchn recipe.

Note that my layered cream would have been a complete disaster if Costas had not intervened. I chose this elaborate mold which was forgotten in the back of a cupboard, I rubbed it with sunflower oil, but at the end the cream still stack, and I almost destroyed it trying, unsuccessfully to unmold it.

Then Costas, who had whipped up gelatin desserts before, used the point of a knife to free the cream all around the mold’s curves, before rapidly plunging it into boiling water. Miraculously he unmolded it on the plate!

Serves 4-6

The panna cotta:

2 tablespoons water

1 tablespoon powdered, unflavored gelatin

Vegetable oil, for unmolding

2 cups full fat, plain Greek yogurt

1 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract

The strawberry gelée:

1 package strawberry-flavored gelatin dessert, preferably without sugar

2 cups chopped fresh strawberries, and/or raspberries

3 tablespoons gin or Grand Marnier

Fresh strawberries to serve the panna cotta

The panna cotta: Place the water in a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over. Set aside for a couple of minutes to soften.

If you plan to unmold the panna cotta, lightly coat the inside of the mold with vegetable oil.

Place the yogurt and half cup of the cream in a medium bowl and whisk to combine; set aside. Place the sugar and remaining cream in a small saucepan over low heat and bring to a simmer, stirring once or twice to dissolve the sugar, about 2-3 minutes.

Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla. Add the gelatin mixture and whisk vigorously to dissolve into the warm cream. Pour this mixture into the bowl of Greek yogurt and whisk until smooth. Let the mixture cool completely in the refrigerator while you prepare the fruit gelée.

The strawberry gelée: Mix the gelatin following the package instructions, adding the gin or liqueur at the end. You can replace the water with your favorite, unsweetened fruit juice.

Form the layered panna cotta: Choose a 5-6 cup bowl and rub with a few drops of unflavored oil. Add about 1 cup of the panna cotta mixture to the bottom, and place the bowl in the freezer for about 10 minutes, until the cream is completely set.

Take the bowl out of the freezer and add about 1 cup of the strawberry gelée over the panna cotta, then return to the freezer for 10 more minutes, or until the fruit gelée is set. Bring out of the freezer again and pour over the rest of the panna cotta. Cover with kitchen film and refrigerate the bowl for at least 4 hours, or overnight.

Serve decorating with chopped strawberries.