For a foodie, what could be nicer than getting to know the products of an area? This is the purpose of Talent for Food, the event designed to put bloggers from all over Italy in contact with companies producing and processing food, wines, spirits and liqueurs from the provinces of Padua and Treviso, of which Valdobbiadene, recently recognised as an intangible heritage of Unesco, is the best known expression.
Talent for Food: discovering the products of an area
How can you say no to such an extraordinary opportunity? So, I too submitted my application to participate in the initiative and after a few weeks I received the Mystery Box containing the 18 products to choose from to make a recipe… mouth-watering!
You can imagine that every time I embark on these wonderful adventures, there is always the fear that I cannot use most of the ingredients because of the presence of gluten… so bated breath until the mysterious box arrives!
I must admit that the first impact was… shocking, do you know why? Because the box had been damaged in transit, causing a bag of Agugiaro&Figna Molini organic wholemeal flour (one of their mills is just a stone’s throw from my house!) to break, which, of course, covered everything like a fine snowfall. What to do? Panic in the ranks! In the end, I decided to separate the gluten free products and subject them to a nice bath in the garden to try to remove all the flour from the waterproof packaging to avoid contamination of their contents when opened.
Having overcome my fear, I was finally able to ‘see’ the gifts from the land of Padua that I could use. Are you curious? Drum roll and here are the products to choose from for my gluten free proposal:
Agricola Grains high oleic sunflower oil https://www.agricolagrains.it/
Bbovis granulated stock preparation https://www.bovis.it/
Dialcos rice and quinoa pasta https://www.dialcos.it/
Molino Favero lentil flour http://www.molinofavero.com/
Goppion Native Coffee http://www.goppioncaffe.it/
Italdroghe saffron powder https://www.italdroghe.it/
Lazzaris strawberry mostarda https://www.lazzaris.com/
Serbosco artichoke cream https://www.serbosco.it/
Well organic stock https://www.brodowell.it/
My first idea of making a pie with a lentil crust, rice and quinoa pasta topped with artichoke sauce and saffron cream vanished in front of the packet of Dialsì pasta, which I found damaged, thus contaminated by the broken bag of wheat flour. I had to find an alternative quickly.
What would you have made with these ingredients?
What would you have prepared with these ingredients considering that the regulation required at least 5 ingredients to be used amongst the ones provided? One of my favourite desserts immediately came to mind: saffron panna cotta! All that was left for me to do was to think about how to use at least four more ingredients in the preparation and, despite the somewhat daunting premise, it only took a moment to come up with my dessert!
Saffron panna cotta is a bit of a workhorse of mine and I usually serve it by simply accompanying it with crumbled amaretti biscuits (super quick version), so I simply had to replace the amaretti biscuits with something similar, but more interesting: a lentil flour crumble. For this crumble, pre-cooked lentil flour and sunflower oil were two perfect allies. In fact, pre-cooked flour allows for better workability and texture, as well as shorter cooking times, and the high oleic oil is a perfect substitute for butter, but allows you to use half the amount.
Another ingredient I chose was coffee. I love coffee and its aroma paces my days, generally associating it with moments of pleasure and tranquillity, so pairing it with a dessert, the quintessential expression of pleasure, was almost a must. A nice coffe pot on the stove and voilà: I could replace water with coffee in a chocolate icing to obtain a coffee-flavoured chocolate sauce for an unforgettable treat.
The unexpected touch to the dish is the spicy sweetness of the strawberry Mostarda: Lazzaris often accompanies my cheese-based desserts (of which, as a good daughter of Parmigiano Reggiano producers, I am very fond), but never before has it accompanied a classic dessert: I’d say it passed the test very well!
Before I unveil the recipe, I’ll give you a smile: I decided to prepare the panna cotta in single portions (whereas I usually prepare it in a large version to be sliced) because I wasn’t sure about the plating…coffee chocolate cream on top or underneath? crumble on top or on the side? and the strawberry? So, with all these doubts, I prepared 8 single portions and set the whole family to work, asking each person to serve their favourite version of this panna cotta. We had a lot of fun and, above all, we ate up all the panna cotta we had prepared as a test! Fortunately, I kept a few aside to photograph and our favourite version is the one I’m sharing with you!
These are the official hashtags for Talent For Food: #talentforfood, #t4f, #aifbt4f, #aifb and this is anoter Panna cotta if you like this type of dessert.
Saffron Panna cotta with lentil crumble and strawberry mostarda
Panna cotta 20.22g carbohydrates per 100g
Crumble 46.83g carbohydrates per 100g
Coffee flavoured chocolate sauce 31g carbohydrates per 100g
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking times: 30 minutes
Rest time: 6 hours
Ingredients for 8 servings
- 500g fresh cream
- 250g milk
- 150g sugar
- 2 sachets of saffron powder
- 15g gelatine sheets* (3 sheets)
Ingredients for the crumble (you will have some left over to use as granola for breakfast)
- 55g red lentil flour Bio Miks*
- 40g almonds
- 40g Demerara dark sugar
- 30g wholemeal rice flour*
- 20g organic high oleic sunflower oil Agricola Grains
- 1 egg
- 15g pine nuts
Ingredients for the coffee flavoured chocolate sauce
- 150g fresh cream
- 100g Goppion Coffee
- 100g sugar
- 75g dark chocolate*
- 50g bitter cocoa powder*
Ingredients to complete
- Lazzaris strawberry mostarda*
*Ingredients whose labels must read “gluten-free” (or, in Italy, present on Prontuario AIC)
Preparation
- Soak the gelatine in cold water.
- Mix cream, milk and sugar and put them on the stove in a saucepan. Stir to melt the sugar and when the mixture is hot, add the saffron and squeezed gelatine; stir until the gelatine is completely dissolved.
- Leave to cool and pour the mixture into 8 single-portion moulds of the desired shape. Put the moulds in the refrigerator for Panna cotta to solidify and cool for at least 6 hours.
- Prepare the crumble. Coarsely chop the almonds, leaving some whole, and mix them with the lentil flour, rice flour, pine nuts and sugar; then add the oil and egg to moisten the mixture and when it forms large crumbs, spread them out on a sheet of parchment paper and bake in a static oven preheated to 180°C for about 15 minutes or until the crumbs are golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- Prepare the chocolate sauce. Prepare 100g of coffee; put the cocoa powder in a small pan, pour in the coffee and stir with a whisk to obtain a lump-free cream, then add the cream and sugar and put on the heat for 5 minutes, stirring well with the whisk (if you have a thermometer, the temperature should be between 70 and 80 degrees, if you do not have a thermometer, keep the mixture just below the boiling point).
- Turn off the stove and add the lightly chopped chocolate, stirring with a whisk so that it melts completely, then leave to cool, stirring occasionally. Once the sauce has cooled, keep it in the refrigerator until it is time to serve the Panna cotta.
- To complete the Panna cotta, unmould each single-portion on the serving platter, top with the coffee chocolate sauce, sprinkle with crumble and complete with a Lazzaris strawberry.

The ingredients of my recipe for Talent for Food
Version with gluten of Saffron Panna cotta with lentil crumble and strawberry mostarda
The recipe contains only naturally gluten-free ingredients or ingredients bearing the gluten free wording, so no adaptation is necessary for its version with gluten.