A Teaser

We're still debating whether this will be part of a sweet or savory course tonight, but I'm leaning towards dessert. It's an orange pepper panna cotta. The butterscotch pudding I made last week used a burnt caramel sauce as one of it's flavor components. The burnt caramel sauce reminded me of a story from Walking on Walnuts, a fictionalized memoir of a NYC pastry chef. She wrote about the trials and tribulations of developing a burnt orange ice cream. When I noticed some fat, juicy orange peppers in the walk-in today I decided to juice them and use them to deglaze a burnt caramel.  As the sugar melted into the pepper juice and turned a deep amber and orange hue, I decided to infuse the mixture into a panna cotta. We'll see how they turn out. The mixture was sweet and intense with surprisingly spicy notes from the pepper juice.  If all goes well, you'll see the finished dish tomorrow and we'll post the recipe alongside it. I actually did record ingredients and procedures this time.