Saffron Strawberry Peach & Vanilla Panna Cotta

I had a friend over recently for dinner who travels every year to Spain, so being the glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to attempt my hand at a Spanish-inspired menu: seafood paella (with chicken chorizo, shrimp, salmon, and tobiko), pan-blackened shishito peppers with smoked salt and shaved Iberico cheese (shishito because I couldn't find padron peppers at the market), and a vanilla panna cotta with saffron-infused strawberry peach sauce. Okay, so to be fair, it wasn't a traditionally Spanish meal, but the inspirations were fun to play around with! I particularly like this saffron-infused strawberry sauce. Strawberries on their own in a sauce tend to be a bit cloying and one-dimensional to me, so the saffron lends an interesting mellow exoticism. It's like that ingredient that you can't really pick out but the dessert would be otherwise empty without. I love those sorts of subtle hints. ;)

Panna cotta is one of those desserts that I just plain refuse to order at restaurants, because they're so easy and delicious to make at home! I like mine with a half-milk/half-cream mix, so that the texture is lighter and doesn't feel reminiscent of sunscreen the way that full-cream panna cottas do. But really, the name makes them sound fancier than they are! It's just milk jello, really!

Life has been cray cray busy lately, so it's nice to have this blog to escape to every once in a while without the pressures of being a regular blogger. Thank you all to those of you who still have me in your blog, email, instagram feeds. I think of you all often, and wonder what magic you're cooking up in your kitchens!


Read on for recipe....

Strawberry, Guava, Campari Ice Pop-tails

If, like me, you discover yourself at that point of the summer when deadlines are heaping upon you at a mad rate because it's almost the end of summer and everything that you planned to get done (which was too much and too ambitious to begin with) in June when summer first started and everything that's gotten piled on since (beacuse it's hard to say "No" when there are seemingly open-ended months with long daylight hours),... make these strawberry, guava, and Campari ice pop-tails, and take a deep breath. In that order, please.

Seriously, the making process (aside from the freezing) takes all about 5 minutes, and you will thank me because the payoff is worth way more than 5 minutes.... which is more than I can say about the other tasks on my to-do list! Anyways, these are inspired by a good friend and collaborator of mine who was the first one to introduce me to Campari and the first one to show me strawberry guavas picked off a real life tree. Of course, strawberry guavas aren't easily available outside of SoCal, so here I've subbed in a combo of fresh summertime strawberries and guava juice. The great thing about guava juice is that it's often sweet enough where you won't need to add any extra sugar to this ice pop. Even so, it's sweet and summery and lightly exotic--not your childhood's strawberry popsicle!

Grab a ice pop, and ganbatte to all of us.

Read on for recipe....