This delicious Blackberry Leaf Panna Cotta Recipe with Black Pepper Sablé features in Robin Gill’s first cookbook, Larder. In late summer it’s such a nice idea to flavour a cream or panna cotta with blackberry leaves, which have a wonderful herbaceous green-tea-like flavour. We sometimes use fig or citrus leaves as an alternative.
Serves 10
Ingredients:
Black Pepper Sablé
– 120g unsalted butter, at room temperature
– 100g caster sugar
– 1 egg yolk
– 2 vanilla pods, split open in half
– 150g plain flour
– ½ tsp fine table salt
– 5g baking powder
– ½ tsp freshly cracked black pepper
Panna Cotta
– 4 sheets/leaves of silver leaf gelatine
– 500ml double cream
– 250ml whole milk
– 75g caster sugar
– 10g Blackberry Leaf Powder (see Larder)
Blackberry Leaf Oil
– 50g fresh unsprayed blackberry leaves, rinsed well in a colander
– 50ml olive oil
Blackberry Liquor
– 150g very ripe blackberries
– 75g dextrose
– a pinch of citric acid
Assembly
– fresh blackberries
– an aromatic herb such as sorrel or lemon balm
Method:
Sable
1. Put the butter and sugar in a stand mixer and whisk together until light and fluffy. Mix in the egg yolk and the seeds scraped from the vanilla pods. Add the flour, salt, baking powder and black pepper and bring together with your hands into a dough.
2. Divide the dough into two pieces. Roll out each piece of dough on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle about 2mm thick and place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Chill for 30 minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 175°C fan/195°C/Gas Mark 5–6. Bake the sablé sheets for 10 minutes or until golden. Cool on the trays, then break into random shards.
Panna Cotta
1. Soak the gelatine in cold water to soften it. Drain and squeeze out excess water, then put into a pan with all the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and strain through a fine sieve into a bowl. Cover and chill the mixture to set.
Blackberry Leaf Oil
1. Blend the leaves and oil together in a blender or food processor until as smooth as possible. Pour into a pan and bring quickly to the boil over a high heat.
2. As soon as the mixture reaches the boil, remove from the heat and strain through a fine sieve into a bowl set over ice (this will cool the oil quickly and help it retain its bright green colour).
Blackberry Liquor
1. Put all the ingredients in a pan, bring to a simmer and simmer for 8 minutes or until the fruit has completely broken down. Pass through a fine sieve, pushing down on the fruit so that all the juice passes through. Cool.
Assembly
1. Whip the panna cotta mixture just to loosen it, then decant into a piping bag. Pipe a round of panna cotta in the bottom of each bowl. Drizzle a little blackberry leaf oil and blackberry liquor into the bottom of the bowl. Garnish with fresh blackberries and whatever herb you have chosen.
2. Serve the sablé biscuits on the side.
RECIPE FROM LARDER BY ROBIN GILL
Each recipe is accompanied by stunning photography by Paul Winch-Furness. Robin Gill Robin Gill