This layered mango panna cotta is an absolutely delicious yet easy to put together dessert. A perfect way to use mangoes during summer and wow your guests.
I love panna cotta as a dessert. It is an easy to put together dessert, and always loved by everyone. What’s not to love- a luscious creamy pudding that you can prep in advance. Plus, it tastes great with fresh ripe fruits like strawberries, cherries, peaches and in this case mango.
Panna cotta is also easily adaptable to fit many dietary restrictions. It is gluten free in its most simple form, and with a few easy dairy replacements can be made vegan too.
So, what is Panna Cotta?
Panna cotta is an italian dessert, made from warming cream just enough to dissolve sugar and gelatin. It is served chilled, and is super easy to make. Panna cotta can be a very light, soft pudding using milk and fruit puree, or a rich, thick pudding using mostly cream. The basic core ingredients are inexpensive, and yet it tastes luxurious and looks beautiful.
Wikipedia cites the origins of panna cotta to a Hungarian woman in the early 1900s, though there is also a mention of a dish in an 1879 dictionary made of cream cooked with gelatin and molded. Whatever the origins, panna cotta is one dessert you should have in your recipe cards.
How do you make Panna Cotta?
Many are under the wrong impression that panna cotta is a complicated dessert. It isn’t. There are very few steps in the preparation of panna cotta, and the only way you can screw up is if you don’t dissolve the gelatin properly.
The steps to make panna cotta are pretty simple.
Warm the cream in a saucepan.
Add sugar, and heat the cream till the sugar dissolves. (Here is when you can get creative by infusing the cream with vanilla beans, or different spices or adding coffee or any other flavor)
While you are warming up the cream, soften the gelatin in a cold liquid.
Once the gelatin blooms, you add that to the warm cream mixture, making sure there are no lumps.
This mixture is then poured into molds, and allowed to set.
You can serve the panna cotta in the molds itself, or unmold and top it with your favorite toppings. Fresh fruit makes a lovely pairing with the creamy panna cotta.
The hardest part about making panna cotta is achieving the proper consistency and texture—it should be silky smooth and just firm, with a gentle wobble. Getting the cream to gelatin ratio helps in that. For every cup of cream, 3/4 tsp-1 tsp gelatin is the ideal ratio to get a good texture.
Flavorful indian butter chicken recipe. Serve it with Naan or rice for a great Indian meal.
Edited to add in June 2020: The recipe for this flavorful butter chicken has been updated with a print friendly recipe. The recipe has also been edited with minor tweaks that I made to the original recipe over the years . Its mostly the same, but after making it many times I have reduced a few ingredients and added others, while keeping the technique more or less the same. The images in this post have also been updated.
Original Post published in May 2011:
I actually look forward to calling people home. Not only does it feel nice to have a a house full of friends and laughter, but it forces me to to clean my house- and no, I am not talking about the “it-would-do” kind of cleaning but the “your-mom-will-give-a-pat-on-your-back” kind of cleaning.
Now, when you call people home or host a party of any sorts, you do expect certain hiccups. You expect it would be too hot to cook. You also expect that you would be out the previous day of the party and get a heat stroke and get a mild migraine because of that. You also expect that the party would fall on that day of the month when women get their stomach cramps and the likes. So you are cooking with a slight migraine, stomach cramps in a hot kitchen. Well, you expect all that and don’t think any of it would cause a big problem. And then you hear a shatter- more specifically you hear glass shattering and that too on your kitchen floor. Ohh..kay… – its a setback but one can get past it- its just a bottle, you can clean that. But then your realize- the bottle had oil. Not only is there glass on the floor but there is oil on the kitchen floor ( and of course you needed that oil for your party!) Now who could anticipate that! You wouldn’t, right! But, I do, thanks to my track record. I have butter fingers and I am very serious when I say that. Ask my friends. Things just slip from my hands and the more I am careful the more likely they are to slip! In fact the degree of the damage I do always depends on the cruciality of the whole situation.
But then when you have a husband like V whats there to worry. He knew I was upset plus he knew I was in all probability to slip on the oil or prick my finger on broken glass (the latter happened and the former almost did), so he opted to mop the floor when my cleaning with the newspaper trick did not work.
Well, thanks to my husband’s helping hands, I was able to get the house clean and ready for the party at home. We had our eclectic International friends for dinner and I made Indian. The menu consisted of butter chicken, dal makhani, mixed vegetable, raita and roti. For dessert, we had mango kulfi and these awesome gluten-free cupcakes that our friend had got for us. I have already posted the recipe for Dal Makhani previously on Garam Masala Tuesdays (GMT). You can find the recipe for Mango Kulfi here. For today’s GMT, I will be talking about Butter chicken.
ORIGINS OF BUTTER CHICKEN
Originating from the period of the Mughal Empire, Murgh Makhani aka Butter chicken has survived through the ages and continues to grow in popularity due to it’s rich and flavorful gravy. It is said that the modern version of the Butter Chicken recipe was invented by a person working in the kitchen of the original Moti Mahal restaurant in Daryaganj, Delhi, during the 1960s to use up leftover Tandoori Chicken.
Butter chicken is a definite order at restaurants in India and has become quite famous abroad as well, though in a slightly modified version named Chicken Tikka Masala.
Well back in India, restaurants do not serve CTM, at least I have never seen it. I have never read it on any menu card in India, even though chicken tikka is always there under appetizers but no chicken tikka masala. Butter chicken, on the other hand, is a must in every North Indian restaurant.
CTM, primarily is a UK born dish.
Chicken Tikka Masala was apparently invented in Great Britain about the same time as the modern version of butter chicken. There is a popular story that some restaurant owner poured Campbell’s condensed tomato soup on top of Chicken Tikka because a customer demanded gravy. The topic, though, is controversial as some claim it to be originating from street food in India.
CTM became popular when it was declared as British National Dish by Robin Cook (nope, he is not the famous author of Coma, Brain and the likes, but was UK’s foreign secretary). Robin Cook’s Tikka Masala speech states CTM as “a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences.“
For long I thought chicken tikka masala is what foreigners called butter chicken. But, after googling I found there are slight differences, though the concept is pretty much similar- grilled chicken in a tomato based curry. The slight differences arise in the preparation of the gravy, the kind of chicken used and the spices added.
Whereas, Butter chicken uses fresh tomatoes, CTM generally uses canned tomato puree. The gravy for butter chicken also is pretty heavy on the butter and cream, while CTM doesnt use butter at all (though I have seen recipes of CTM that do! confused? so am I!) and instead has onions. Another supposed difference lies in the kind of chicken used- one uses tandoori chicken and the other uses chicken tikka (nope, no points for guessing which uses which). Also, CTM always uses boneless chicken (since that’s what the recipe for chicken tikka calls for), whereas butter chicken is best prepared with chicken with bones, though one could use boneless pieces too. Someone also observed the use of thigh pieces or whole chicken in butter chicken, whereas CTM uses breasts pieces. Dried fenugreek leaves play a heavy role in the chicken marination for butter chicken, while they do not feature in the other, instead CTM uses cilantro/coriander in the marination.
I can not confirm the authenticity for these difference, since it is based on my observation of different recipes online and personally I feel that since both are modern recipes, originating in restaurants, the difference is primarily one of nomenclature- a difference that arose because people wanted to get attributed to the origin of the dish. For me, though, the authentic Indian dish will always be butter chicken and that is what we are making for GMT today.
Butter chicken is made by marinating chicken overnight in a yogurt, garlic, ginger paste, pepper, dried fenugreek leaves, cumin and red chilli powder mixture. The chicken is traditionally cooked in a tandoor (how I wish I had one at home), but can also be grilled, or broiled in the oven.
Makhani, the sauce, true to its name is cooked in butter (calories! but so worth it!) and pureed fresh tomatoes with various spices. Kasoori methi (dried fenugreek leaves) which is also added to the dish, lends most to the characteristic flavor of the dish. Cashew paste can also be added, and will make the gravy thicker and richer (translate: yummier).
The recipe that I use is a mix of my mother’s and Nandu’s, our cook in India. My mom gives the recipe a nice smoky twist by cooking the gravy in charcoal smoke. It adds a lot of flavor to the gravy and is pretty easy to do!
A week back, on this day- Tuesday, I started a new thing on the blog– Garam Masala Tuesdays or as someone I know put it GMT (I tell you, these things are not intentional- they just happen 🙂 !). This Tuesday its my second post for Garam Masala Tuesday and even though I have been in no mood of cooking- it has been a 2 1/2 months long break from cooking– but I had to post something today. How can I start something a week back and not live up to the promise!
Since I had to post, and there were no two ways about it, I thought I would make something that would not require too much effort. And, something that I knew V had eaten rarely in the last 2 1/2 months. And something I love quite dearly. So it had to be Dal Makhani.
Dal Makhani is the quintessential Punjabi dish (Punjab is a state in the northern part of India). Dal means lentils and makhani means buttery; so, literally translated dal makhani reads “buttery lentils”. Dal Makhani, butter naan and butter chicken are staple to Punjabi food- the above three and rajma chawal are always top of every Punjabi’s favorite food list.
Dal makhani is a rich, creamy lentil dish that is traditionally cooked on a low simmer for hours in a pureed tomato and butter gravy. Traditionally, the dal was cooked by leaving overnight on burning charcoal. It is also called Maa ki Dal. Though Maa means mother in Hindi, Maa is also the name given to whole unskinned black lentils and hence the name for the dish.
If you notice, the common thing to most Punjabi dishes is, yes, you guessed it- butter. Ah, butter- utterly butterly delicious butter! Being a north Indian and a hard core Punjabi, now you know the reason behind my affinity to butter and the reason for my tendency to put on weight. Well, tradition is a tough thing to break from and when tradition comes in the form of butter, you know the battle is lost!
There are lot of different versions of this dish but I like this one as its easy and the results are always great. Plus, there is no chopping involved in the recipe I use (that is exactly why I chose to make it today). And requires very little time in the kitchen. It does take 2 hours for the whole preparation but you are not required to be in the kitchen the whole time. This dish is great even the next day- so feel free to make a day before you plan to serve it. The dish is great both with rice and with Indian flatbreads like chappati/roti or naan.
Edited to add in June 2020: The recipe for this flavorful butter chicken has been updated with a print friendly recipe. The recipe has also been edited with minor tweaks that I made to the original recipe over the years . Its mostly the same, but after making it many times I have reduced a few ingredients and added others, while keeping the technique more or less the same. The images in this post have also been updated. 
