Before beginning, or to be honest after a failed first attempt, I came across a blog called The Tasting Menu that had an entry Perfecting Panna Cotta. This was exactly the thoughtful explanation and recipe I was after. It discussed the chemistry of the process and helped me to appreciate how being careful about all the different temperatures would create the best texture. Perfecting panna cotta would also require a lot of patience (and some extra time), but was well worth each careful step, it’s by far the most delicious panna cotta I’ve made.

Steeping.

Instead of the sheet/leaf gelatin, I used 1.5 tsps gelatin. Following is how I adapted Dana’s recipe to my own (thanks Dana!).

Rosemary Lemon Panna Cotta (adapted from Perfecting Panna Cotta)

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup sugar

zest of one lemon

2 Rosemary Sprigs

1 Vanilla Bean, cut in half and scraped

3 cups cream, 1/2 cup held very cold

1.5 tsp gelatin

Preparing:

Place 1/2 cup of cream in the bowl you intend to whip it in, and place it in the refrigerator along with the whisk you intend to whisk it with.

Gather six 6-oz serving dishes or desired molds, lightly oil.

1. Steep the milk with the sugar and flavors. Place the milk, sugar, lemon zest, vanilla bean and rosemary sprigs (spank the sprigs in your hands to release the flavors) in a small sauce pan and heat just below boiling, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from heat and steep for half an hour.

2. Prepare the gelatin. When the milk has steeped for 20 minutes, sprinkle the 1.5 tsps. gelatin over 2T cold water in a heat proof ramekin. Let gelatin stand until softened, about 5-10 minutes. Place the heatproof gelatin ramekin in a pot of simmering water (make sure water is well below edge of ramekin), and stir until the gelatin dissolves and the liquid is clearish. Remove from heat and set aside.

2. Add the gelatin. Strain the milk, and return to a sauce pan, rewarming the milk. Add the gelatin to the warm milk, and stir until completely dissolved and evenly dispersed. Transfer to a bowl and allow to cool on the counter at room temperature for 1 hour.

3. Whip the cream. When the milk is cooled, begin whipping the 1/2 cup of very cold cream. Do this with gentle back and forth motions of the whisk, avoiding beating much air into the cream. You should see the cream begin to thicken in a minute or two, once the fat globules are damaged enough to adhere to each other. Continue gently agitating the cream with the whisk, stopping when the cream is thick enough to hold itself, but doesn’t quite hold peaks.

4. Add the cream to the cooled milk/gelatin. Add the unwhipped cream to the milk/gelatin mixture that has cooled on the counter with a whisk. Carefully now, add the whisk thickened cream and fold with a spatula until the two are evenly combined.

5. Fill the molds or serving dishes. Pour the panna cotta into the dishes or molds quickly, as the cold from the cream will now begin to fully set the gelatin. You will see the mixture is thick, and may need to tap the glasses a bit to obtain a flat top, or use an offset spatula to smooth the top of the molds.

6. Chill the Panna Cotta. Place the panna cotta in the refrigerator and allow to set overnight. It will take a full day of setting to achieve the propper texture.

I slipped the panna cottas out of their molds and onto plates and topped with three homemade candied meyer lemon zest curls.

WINE

If you have ever felt that walking into a wine shop was a daunting endeavor, take heart and make a point of visiting Biondivino Wine Boutique. Biondivino carries around 550 different wines from all 20 regions of Italy, with a focus on smaller producers as well as obscure and unique indigenous varieties. I recommend browsing the 162 wines that are $20 and under.

Ceri (pronounced ‘carrie’), seems to know every bottle intimately and will recount their unique nuances and histories as if she were describing dear friends. And she, along with her cohort Zach, were just as thoughtful when they recommended delicious wine pairings for our dinner. Their notes on each wine are included with the dinner notes below. We also learned that Zach is an SFBC member and he is currently working on a movie project documenting the Rome Sustainable Food Project, see http://romefoodmovie.com

Biondivino
1415 Green Street, (at Polk)
415.673.2320
When you visit, mention that you were a Foodlove diner and please thank Ceri for contributing!

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DINNER

A fitting first flirtation for the evening matched a complex aperitif with lusciously pungent flavors of pickled vegetables and blue cheese crackers. The crackers were house-made along with the carrots, pickled fresh from the season. However, the hit was the pickled green beans from Boozely’s.
Brad, Boozely’s founder and master pickler, comes from a long line of picklers–and it shows! Boozely’s is dedicated to a local and sustainable lifestyle by supporting local farmers and only selling his products locally. They will even deliver your order to you via bike or other non-polluting methods of transportation. Brad is super friendly and an avid local cyclist, get to know him and his pickled veggies!
Boozelys Pickles and Preserves
http://www.boozelys.com

The Old Square cocktail came to us by way of our dear bartender friend Christ. Chris loaned us this special recipe and made sure we had the right local ingredients including fine alambic brandy from Germain-Robin of Mendocino and the California sweet vermouth called Vya.
Since our Foodlove dinner, the Vieux Carre (Old Square) has appeared on the menu at Flora in downtown Oakland, where Christ bartends. I love the food at Flora, and it is an easy BART ride and stone’s throw from the 19th Street Station. Well worth going to Oakland for dinner and/or drinks. Say hi to Christ when you are there.

Flora
1900 Telegraph Avenue, (at 19th Street)
510.286.0100
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The next two courses were the brainchild and product of dear Colleen. Expertly crafted from conception to creation, both the Chicken Liver Pate with broccoli rabe on toast and the Green Garlic Soup with creme fraiche evolved from Colleen’s desire to showcase fresh, complex flavors with minimal distraction.

The generous portion of pate required a suitable wine compliment, that would hold up to the richly earthen flavors of this french countryside snack yet remain subtle and refreshing. Lini Lambrusco became the definitive linchpin in the menu’s meal transitions. Lini is considered one of the best lambrusco producers in Emilia Romagna.Traditionally, Lambrusco is red and most often paired with salumi — this one is white, as the grapes are the indigenous salamino 80% - sorbara 20%. It has a great fresh quality to it with a subtle hint of fruit and citrus without sweetness.

At the height of its season, the green garlic, took perfect form in a broth-based soup and the Massone Gavi wine helped introduce us all into the Piemonte region of Italy, where all remaining wines hail from. Gavi is from the South Eastern corner of Piedmont in the town of Gavi. The grape is 100% Cortese which is one of few whites grown and produced in Piedmont. It can range from being very full and rich, apricot-ty to lighter and fresher in style with great minerality.
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Rigatoni all’Amatriciana — my mouth waters just typing it. Avram brought this recipe, which is very close to his heart and reminiscent of his old world travels and meals made for multitudes. Tomatoes formed the base of the sauce, and the best discovery we made on our ingredient search is Happy Girl Kitchen Co., and their bountiful stall at the Ferry Building Farmers Market. All of their preserved products are excellent and they even offer classes in canning. The organic dry-framed tomatoes that Aurora selected for us that Saturday morning were a great addition to the onions, guanciale (cured pork jowel) and spicy red pepper.
Check out http://happygirlkitchen.com, or visit them at the market.

Of course, the other thing to remember from this course is: Barbera! Also from Piedmont, Barberas pair well with everything. They are known for their bright fruit and no tannin. The Mutti Barbera we drank comes from the area of Tortona, it has bright red fresh fruit and is aged in large stainless barrels so it does not have a heavy oaky presence. Andrea Mutti is the winemaker.
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For the last two courses, we poured La Selvatica Moscato. A classic sparkling from Piedmont made by the Caudrina family. This is bottled with a little more atmospheric pressure than most moscatos, so it is a little more effervescent and less sweet. The label is “La Donna Selvatica” (The wild woman - Maria) Romano Levy’s Love of his life - no one really knows if she existed but he adorned many of his grappa bottles with her image - and Ceri deemed this, “the perfect valentine wine.”
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Complimenting the freshest, babyest greens of the day were three cheeses purchased from Cowgirl Creamery. If you can endure the crowd and the wait, you will gain an education and the confidence that your purchase has done good for the world. In buying farmstead cheese rather than industrially produced cheese, you will support the fine art of farmstead cheesemaking, enjoy a wide range of distinctive cheeses that are full of nuance and flavor, help to insure jobs in rural areas, and contribute to protecting farmlands from development.

Cowgirl Creamery at
The Ferry Building
415.362.9354
http://www.cowgirlcreamery.com

For the first cheese we selected Cowgirl Creamery’s signature product, Mt Tam. It is a smooth, creamy, elegant, triple-cream, made with tasty organic milk from the Straus Family Dairy. Mt Tam is firm, yet buttery with a mellow, earthy flavor reminiscent of white mushrooms.

Cheese two is from Cypress Grove Creamery, where the giant redwoods kiss the Pacific Ocean in the rugged northernmost reaches of Humboldt County. This goat milk cheese is made following a Dutch gouda recipe. Dense and chewy, Midnight Moon is aged for at least one year, during which time it develops a lovely brown butter flavor with intense caramel undertones.

Serena, from Three Sisters Farmstead Cheese Co., completed the trio. If classic Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano and tulip-sniffing Gouda were to marry, Serena would be their delicious progeny. A rich, nutty, and bright flavor develops in the cow’s milk cheese during the nine to twelve month aging process and the texture becomes dry and flakey.
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How fortunate we are in San Francisco to have several, local, delicious coffee purveyors to choose from — Ritual, Blue Bottle even Mountanos Brothers. To complement Teri’s savory-sweet Rosemary Panna Cotta, we used Candelilla as our french-press coffee from Four Barrel.

Four Barrel Coffee
375 Valencia St (at 15th)

Admittedly, the best tid-bit of learning I received that night was from Megan: De La Paz Coffee, in the Mission. De La Paz is a small batch coffee roasting company that focuses on freshness and great tasting coffee. I am definitely going to check this out: http://www.delapazcoffee.com
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For several reasons, I think the final course was my favorite.
Pure and tidy, the single handcrafted sweet along with thimble-sized digestif embodied a lot the ideals of Foodlove. Bringing together local resources and handcraft food-making skills toward a celebratory end, thus enabling friends and strangers to commune at the mouth, as it were — very sexy and very food-lovely.

A locally derived and generously donated spirit, we capped our night with the Water of Life, or Eau de Vie, as it is typically called. This one distilled from Fremont Plums picked off of a friend’s tree and fermented by Avram in Berkeley.

Another friend and colleague, Melissa, made the exquisite Dark Chocolate Honey B.
Although an Architect, her fastidious nature is not overly applied to the candy’s form. She does however bring an unyielding attention to detail in the precise combination of carefully considered ingredients. Butter caramels made with Northern California sage honey and Dagoba chocolate — “A dream on a promise,” said Colleen. Yes.

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THANK YOU

All contributors: You made this event possible by doing what you do best. Thank you for sharing the love!

Our wonderful guests and diners: Thank you for joining us and for supporting the SFBC. Thank you for being willing to journey into the cold, wet and dark (and climb all those stairs) towards an unknown destination — for being the like-minded folk we hoped for, willing to do something wacky and unexpected on a night traditionally frought with banality.

And Kyrie: Not only did you save us when all seemed lost, but you subsequently set the bar extremely high for all future events. Thank you!

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CAST

Diners . . . . . Carol, Eric, Erin, Robert, Megan, Patrick, Kirsten, Dave, Sara, Jonah, Racine and Dylan
Ushers . . . . . Dax and Friday
Chefs . . . . . Colleen and Avram
M.V.P. . . . . . Kyrie
Hosts . . . . . Teri and Frank
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Happy Eating!

In the spirit of prohibition era speakeasys and current day underground restaurants, Aesthetic Appetite is auctioning exclusive invitations to its dinner club to benefit the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Join us.

A speakeasy DINNER CLUB hosts a convivial gathering of twelve guests in downtown San Francisco. Join us Saturday, February 14, 2009 to indulge in an evening of great food, fine drink and new conversations.

In the spirit of prohibition era speakeasys and current day underground restaurants, Aesthetic Appetite is auctioning exclusive invitations to its dinner club to benefit the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

Spend a leisurely evening enjoying drink, food and new company as you are treated to a multi-course feast at a large communal table. Each course is hand prepared and matched to a select wine.

Come hungry. Leave sated.

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Aesthetic Appetite savors seasonal ingredients and supports local farmers through a series of community dinners. We are passionate about the process of bringing together like minded folks and cultivating relationships over food and drink.

The Vesper Martini:
3 oz gin (9 cl, 3/4 gills)
1 oz vodka (3 cl, 1/4 gills)
1/2 oz Lillet Blanc (1.5 cl, 1/8 gills)
Shake in iced cocktail shaker & strain
Serve in a cocktail glass (4.5 oz)
Add lemon twist

I found it, like crawling into a desert oasis, after a brutal day at work. It was the kind of day that made me question my profession and whether or not it was too late to re-tool for a new life endeavor . . . I arrived at home feeling defeated and just needed a stiff drink to wash away the bad guys. The apartment was empty except for the voraciously whiny cats and, after filling their bellies with kibble, I set to work drenching my wounds.

I love my bitter-old-man after-work-cocktails almost as much as I enjoy hyphenated-phrases. I scanned the liquor cabinet but did not feel compelled toward any of the ol’ standbys, however I was drawn to a virtually brand new bottle of Lillet Blanc, leftover from Teri’s recent Birthday gathering.

Lillet is the French proprietary name for Quinquina which is basically alcoholic bitters having quinine as one of the main ingredients. I was first introduced to this spirit at my birthday party last year when my friend Derek, ever suave, immediately presented me a bottle upon his arrival. All the guests and I eagerly sampled it throughout the night and I personally enjoyed its uniquely sweet draw and slightly herbal after-flavor, both traits suiting its traditional role as well-chilled aperitif.

Not being readily aware of any mixed drinks containing Lillet, I thought I would give the internet a random spin to assist my predicament. A quick search of the Internet Cocktail Database led me to their current “Top 25 Drink Choices,” upon which is listed the Vesper Martini as number six following Cuba Libre, The Alabama Slammer, Preakness, Manhattan and Mojito, in that order.

The Vesper beckoned to me because it was the only recipe that contained Lillet, yet it also presented a rapid simplicity necessary to accomplish the task at hand.
Maybe even the name hooked me: Vesper. Very breezy and yet somehow evoking the viperous bite that lay within. Daniel Craig drank at least one Vesper Martini in the 2006 movie, Casino Royale. I always equated James Bond with the “shaken not stirred” standard, however the Vesper certainly has its espion appeal: strong, sophisticated, irresistible and wily.

. . . I savored the hint of Meyer lemon aroma in my nostrils before taking a sip.
“Ooh. Damn, that’s not bad at all!”
The cats are watching intently but do not seem impressed with my discovery.
I, on the other hand, am resuscitated from a poisonous day at the office, as if by some high-tech plot-difibrilator entering my being through the first whiff and saving the day via a slyly written, gadget-invoked, plot-continuance-device
. . wait, huh?
“Tha’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! This sip is good.”

It’s every bit the mature master of cocktail espionage, with plenty of allure to spare for the ladies. Cool, unassuming, smooth and effective.
Try it out the next time you need to save the world.