Take a bite out of the new year!

In Hungary pigs are so popular that it is good luck to eat a whole one for good luck on New Year's Day. No, not Wilbur! Nope. Not Wilbur indeed. This one is made from walnuts and wafer cookies and glued together with caramel. This kind of confection is called grillázs in Hungarian and it is tasty.

This guy is decked out for the new year with 2010 on one side...

And Buék on the other. Buék is short for "Boldog Új Évet!" which means Happy New Year. This is one festive pig, but is it delicious?

.....

Yes! Caramelized walnuts and wafers with some frosting on top is in fact delicious and fun all at the same time.

Here's looking forward to the new year.

Panna Cotta

This devine dessert has in the back of my mind since I lived in Rome.

Caramel Panna Cotta.

With Spring finally sprung I have been craving so many things light and fresh as well as being able to fully enjoy something best served cold. That's why I made three variations of this classic dessert. The above was made with a simple caramel that I whipped up and put in the bottoms of some tea cups. (It's funny what you do when you need to improvise just about your entire kitchen whenever you want to make something new.)

Blueberry Panna Cotta.

I worked for about an hour working some frozen blueberries into a syrup, then cooking it further into a reduction, and finally straining out the pure blueberry essence that eventually crowned the tops of the blueberry panna cotta. The color contrast was as beautiful as the taste. Just as an aside: there was a little bit of the blueberry reduction sauce left that perfectly topped a creamy batch of tejbegriz. I love making variations on a theme, something I've really enjoyed experimenting with here.

I also made an espresso batch of panna cotta, it was beautiful too, but alas, it was all gone before I could snap any pictures of it. I guess I'll just have to make it again.