for those of you who don't know, mother's day is the busiest day of the year in the restaurant industry. yep, even busier than valentine's day! and in an attempt to avoid all the crowds and long waiting periods just for a table at a restaurant, i wanted to cook a nice breakfast for my mom instead. this has been a long-running tradition for a few years now, although it's somewhat of a feat when my mom sets her alarm to 5:30 every morning :/ these are the challenges i encounter in life!
anyway, to make the breakfast a little more memorable (no Denny's specials here!), i wanted to end the meal with something light in texture with a good balance of sweetness, creaminess, and tartness. so, for dessert i decided to make a honey panna cotta topped with a blackberry and strawberry coulis. sooo good :p
i went to Goodwill and browsed around for some cute little glasses to show off the layers of the dessert, and i found these stemless red wine glasses and little dessert glasses for $1 each. pretty good bargain for something i intend to use for future food presentations :)
panna cotta is Italian for "cooked cream." the texture is like a custard, except i think most of the recipes don't use eggs. the honey definitely gave it such a good flavor. it kind of makes me sad to look at these pictures because i wish i had one right now...
all eight of them, looking super glossy and sexy ;) i garnished each one with a strawberry quarter, a couple of blackberries, and a mint leaf from the plant we have growing in the backyard.
and here's the rest of the breakfast table scape i prepared: scrambled eggs with cheese, peppers, and scallions, salsa, cubed watermelon and strawberries (which i originally planned to turn into a nice slushie, but after cutting it i realized it had a LOT of seeds in it -___-), and carnitas i made myself. the carnitas were BOMB. and they weren't that difficult to make, either! i pretty much just put everything in the slow cooker the night before, and the next morning when i woke up i could smell it, and it was
awesome. we also had some corn tortillas to make tacos with. aimee was
supposed to make maseca pancakes, but she didn't wake up early enough, and she just tends to be grumpy in the morning when you tell her to do stuff :/
after going to church, the fambam and i went over to my cousin's house because they had a little lunch/dinner shindig going on (for which i made potato salad and my sis made rice crispy treats) and we pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon into nighttime over there. i spent some of that time in awe of my cousin's garden in their backyard, and also got to watch their rabbit just sit there and do nothing particularly cute... my rabbit can beat up that rabbit, good! >:D
speaking of gardens, mine is a work in progress! since we can't technically plant anything in the ground, i'm planning on having a small raised garden bed, and i already bought some plants from my school's horticulture sale last week (woot for $1 plants!). so far i have a cherry tomato plant, heirloom tomato plant, a strawberry plant, thyme, basil, parsley, sage, and mint. hopefully they'll all still be alive once the actual garden is built!
at least it looks good right? the color looks really good too. i garnished it with some fresh blackberries and mint leaves, and also one of the tuile cookies we made in class on ice cream day. it tastes like a waffle cone! :D
blackberries simmering away... one thing i should have done after blending all this stuff is strain it, but alas, our fine mesh strainer is about the size of my fist (probably meant for tea leaves) and also i was feeling lazy that night.
the mixture before i put it in the freezer...
a close-up of it all. since it was so sour, i served it after the BBQ today and pitched it as "blackberry frozen yogurt" since it tasted more like yogurt than ice cream :/ one thing i DID like was deciding to put chocolate chunks in it, even though some of the chunks were honkin' HUGE and some were really small. but still good! chocolate never seems to fail me :)
