I love mixing textures, flavors, colors and temperatures in my food and this was a fun experiment that turned out really well!
It involves a couple of steps, but once they are completed you can pretty much assemble this dessert in just before you’re going to eat it. It’s great with things you can prepare in advance, isn’t it?

In this baby you’ve got something creamy, something chewy, sweet and salt, something cool and fragile that turns into smooth chocolate when you eat it, something warm and spiced up and something sweet and sour. A lot of things but belive it or not - this thing works!

Vanilla pannacotta
You’ll find the recipe here.

Candied pistachios

1. Put the honey and the powdered sugar and a few drops of water in a pan and bring it to a boil.
2. Put in the pistachios and give it a good stir.
3. Let them cook in the sugar for 2-3 minutes and then take out the pistachios and put them on a baking sheet to cool. Try to spread them out as much as possible so they don’t stick to each other. Try to just take out the pistachios since the honey/sugar mixture tend to form large sugary sheets. You want nice, clean pistachios coated with honey.
4. When they’re cool, break them up if you have to and store dry and cool.

Frozen chocolate air

1. Break up the chocolate into small pieces and put them in a big bowl.
2. Pour the soy lecithin over the chocolate and mix.
3. Bring the water to a boil and pour it over the chocolate while stirring.
4. When the chocolate has melted completely, take an immersion blender and start blending with the knife close to the surface.
5. You will now get huge bubbles in the bowl. Carefully take these out of the bowl using a big spoon and put it in a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
6. Keep blending to get more foam. Continue to fill the baking tray until you think it’s enough. Put it in the freezer.
7. When it’s time to serve, not before since it melts quickly, take the tray out of the freezer and break the frozen foam into pieces using a spoon. The foam is pretty delicate so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Pear compote

1. Peel and remove the seeds from the pear. Cut it into small pieces and place them into a pan.
2. Add the sugar, cardamom and water and turn up the heat. Let it simmer until dark brown and just a little bit sticky. The pears should not disintegrate.
3. Keep it warm or heat it up just before you’re going to serve.

Sour sea-buckthorn caramel
To make the sea-buckthorn juice you can heat up fresh or frozen sea-buckthorn berries and puree them through a sieve.

1. Pour the juice from the orange and the sea-buckthorn into a pan and add the liquid glucose.
2. Bring the mixture to a boil and keep boiling until it reaches 111°C/231,8°F when it caramelizes.
3. Cool.

Time for building our dessert!
Take the pannacotta and place it on a big plate. Add a small heap of warm pear compote, a couple of chunks of frozen chocolate air and a string of sea-buckthorn caramel. Top the pannacotta with the pistachios. Ready to serve!