This marks the first episode of Season 5, a key year for Good Eats, as Alton leaves the original white counter kitchen and settles into the hardwood kitchen that would become the iconic space for the series.  That space won’t be shown until the next episode, however.  Apparently, the kitchen would not be ready to shoot in until after season 5’s shooting schedule began, so this episode had to be shot on location, and this episode was created to fill that need.

I’m rather ambivalent on gelatin desserts, if only because it’s a dessert that’s fallen into disfavor.  Back in the fifties, there were plenty of recipes that featured them, but plenty of them have disappeared, probably because they were horrid.  The worst part is that they didn’t just relegate gelatin to desserts – they made aspics, savory gelatins, with flavors that should never have been combined.  We recoiled from these culinary crimes, and gelatin was relegated to the ignoble realm of cafeteria-based chow.

We have two recipes to examine today, and before I start, I should discuss the names right now.  The first is labeled “Panna Cotta Brain with Cranberry Glaze,” and the other is “Sparkling Gingered Face.”  The conceit behind the episode is that Alton is a special effects consultant for a film crew, and he makes gelatin based practical effects.  I wanted to actually make the face mold, but I couldn’t find one anywhere.  I knew I could find the brain mold, and wanted to make it for my coworkers and bring it in for Halloween, and a few weeks before October’s end, I found a mold at a party shop in town.

So, onto the first recipe, which was the face.  It’s a rather simple recipe, requiring only prosecco, unflavored powdered gelatin, ginger beer, and sugar.  You combine the prosecco and gelatin in a mixing bowl and stir to combine.  In a saucepan, you combine the ginger beer and sugar, and bring to a boil.  Then you combine, pour into your mold, and refrigerate.  While this one was easy, it didn’t taste very good.  I chalk this one up to having a rather mild ginger beer.  I wanted one that had a good deal of bite, but it ended up being milder than Canada Dry.  If I ever make this one again, I’ll need to do a tasting of several ginger beers before I do, and find one that’s got some real good gingery heat to it.

So, the brain.  I ended up spending a great deal of time on this one, as I wanted to get the effect done perfectly.  The idea is that the panna cotta – a cream-based gelatin dessert – goes in the brain mold, and the cranberry glaze is the blood.  I knew I wanted to color the dessert so that it was gray, just to enhance the look of it.  I spent a good fifteen minutes tinkering with food coloring in my kitchen, trying to figure out how to get gray. Of course, ten of those minutes were spent adding coloring to water, until I realized that these experiments were worthless.  The medium I was going to be dropping these colors into was white, not clear!  If I wanted gray, I needed to first make black.  That was actually pretty easy – equal parts of red, yellow, and blue gave me a black base, and once I poured a bit of milk into that cup, I was able to tinker with the coloration enough to get the gray I wanted.

The actual recipe isn’t much more difficult than the sparkling ginger face.  The gelatin blooms in evaporated milk, and another saucepan of more evaporated milk, cream, sugar, vanilla bean, salt, and bourbon simmers until it just begins to bubble.  The hot liquid goes into the cold, and it’s stirred to combine.  The food coloring is added here, and it’s all cooled for an hour.  It’s then strained, placed in the brain mold, and sets in the fridge to firm up overnight.

Again, I had perfectionist tendencies on this one – I needed the brain mold to be as level as possible, so I had to rig up something to keep it level in the fridge.  I had the lip of the mold setting on a can of baking powder, as it was just the right height to keep it level.  I wanted to make sure I didn’t cause a mess by spillage, so I put it on a sheet pan and transferred the liquid into the mold.  As I poured it, though, I clearly didn’t think through what I had done.  While the sheet pan balanced just fine when it was pulled partway out of the fridge, it upended once I had put some of the cream into it, getting goop all over my fridge.  I had to pull everything out, trash some food that was coated in the stuff, and clean several items by hand, like the crisper drawers.  Fortunately, there was still plenty left, so the recipe was not a bust.

The cranberry glaze was also a bit problematic.  You use gelatin to thicken the juice, but you use far less of it, so it doesn’t immediately gelatinize.  It’s supposed to set up once it’s drizzled onto the brain, but I found it just drizzled off.  I also found it too translucent, and if I were to do this again, I would find some way to make it opaque to make it look more like blood.

How was it, though? Amazing.  It tasted sweet, and the tartness of the cranberry’s a great counterpart.  On top of this, the gray color was perfect, and there were several people who had some apprehension at eating the brain.  My only complaint about the brain is that when I strained the liquid, the vanilla bean seeds stayed in it.  I think I’ll probably add some cheese cloth to the strainer next time to catch these tiny things, since they all settled at the bottom of the upturned mold, which then became the top when removed from the mold.

Next Time: The infamous oat episode.  God help me if I must make haggis.

Recipes:

Panna Cotta Brain with Cranberry Glaze

Sparkling Gingered Face