Spiced pumpkin and coffee panna cotta
Pumpkin or butternut squash: 10.6 oz/300g, peeled and deseeded
Sunflower or vegetable oil: 1 tsp
Whole milk: 2.4 oz/70ml
Instant coffee granules: 1 tbsp
Platinum gelatine: 2 leaves
Double cream: 6.6 oz/195ml
Caster sugar: 1.8 oz/50g
Ground cinnamon: ¼ tsp
Ground nutmeg: ¼ tsp
Ground ginger: ¼ tsp ground ginger
Feuilletine flakes: 2 tbsp
Cocoa nibs four: 1 tsp
A perfect fall dessert from chef Roberta Hall-McCarron of Edinburgh's The Little Chartroom, from her cookbook, The Changing Tides.
How to make spiced pumpkin and coffee panna cotta
Chop the peeled pumpkin into small pieces and place into a pot with the oil. Cover with a lid and gently cook on a medium heat, stirring occasionally, until you can easily pierce the pumpkin with a fork, about 5 minutes or so.
Once cooked, remove the lid and keep cooking the pumpkin on a low heat to dry it out a little, stirring frequently to stop it from burning. Blitz to get a smooth purée, then pass it through a sieve and weigh out 50g to use in the panna cotta. Press a bit of cling film on to the surface to stop it forming a skin.
Warm the milk and coffee granules in a small pot until steaming. Bloom the gelatine in a small bowl of cold water for about 5 minutes. Add the weighed out pumpkin purée to the milky coffee along with the cream, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved and the spices are mixed in, then take the pot off the heat.
Squeeze out any excess liquid from the gelatine, then add it to the pot and stir until it has dissolved. Strain the mix into a bowl through a piece of muslin—you might have to squeeze the last bit through but it's worth doing to get a really smooth panna cotta—and put the bowl over ice to cool. Stir the mix regularly to stop the spices all sinking to the bottom and then, once it has cooled but before it sets, divide the panna cotta between 6cm dariole moulds. Put them in the fridge to set for at least 2 hours.
Fill a small bowl with hot but not boiling water and dip the moulds in for 10 seconds, being careful to not get any water in the panna cotta. This should loosen them enough that you can turn the panna cottas out on to serving plates. Sprinkle a little feuilletine and some cocoa nibs on top of each one and serve.