The Milk Moon of May

With a Rose Geranium Panna Cotta Recipe for Celia

Is May one of the most splendid months of the year? June, September and October (and maybe even January) make close contenders but it is the great green growth of May - so new, so tender, so young - that sings with such optimism that it cannot fail to reach its tendrils into your soul after a long, cold winter and invite you to begin life anew again.

I’ve often wondered if it’s a coincidence that Celia’s favourite colour was green when her birthday was May the 2nd. So it is that the delights of May bloom hand in hand with my love for this grandma who lives on vicariously, voraciously through my appetite and joy for nature.

For her birthday month I decided that her dish would be a panna cotta (you can read about the entire spring supper I cooked for her here, if you like). One that would be infused with the rose geranium leaves that near threaten to take over my kitchen, climbing the window frames and trailing the table as if there were no bounds. I wanted to make something that represented the full Milk Moon of May as a nod to a sort of poem I wrote in 2016, reimagining one of Celia’s earliest memories with the context of 1125 full moons since… it’s pasted at the footer of this article because I’m going to assume you want the scoop on the panna cotta first, and because I have a hang up that the last stanza entirely loses its way, even if the sentiment is there. The sentiment is always there. I’ll just keep working on it.

I only ever had a bad panna cotta growing up. How about you? It was always at an Italian restaurant, they had always used too much gelatine, and they were always splattered in some kind of coulis blood bath. Then, one day, I had the panna cotta of my life. It was creamy and smooth and melted with a slight tremble at the sight of my spoon rather than the heaving almost defensive wobble I was used to. Since then, it has become one of my favourite desserts and I have made many at home. It’s so bloody easy. Infused with the flavour and fragrance of flowers like jasmine, rose, lavender, or teas like Matcha or Earl Grey. Occasionally I add sticky, syrupy fruits on the side like peaches baked in brown sugar. For Celia’s panna cotta, I enjoyed two sittings. One to simply enjoy the taste of rose geranium, and the other at breakfast with a spoonful of Italian amarena cherries in their syrup cold from the fridge.

I generally follow BBC Good Food’s recipe as my base and take it from there, infusing what I fancy into the milk. For the rose geranium, I used about twelve leaves plucked from the plant and tore them into smaller pieces by hand, adding them into the hot milk stage (and this is how I also flavour the milk with tea).

“Ingredients

2 ½ sheets gelatine

150ml milk

400ml double cream

60g caster sugar

1 vanilla pod, split lengthways

Method

Add the sheets of gelatine to a bowl of cold water and soak for 5 mins.

Pour the milk and cream into a saucepan with the sugar and vanilla seeds (to scrape the seeds out of the pod, use the back of a knife). Stir to combine and bring to a simmer, then remove from the heat. Take the gelatine out of the cold water and squeeze out the excess, then add to the milk mixture. Stir until completely dissolved. Tip into four ramekins and place in the fridge to set for at least a couple of hours.

To serve, turn each ramekin upside-down onto a serving plate. If the panna cotta won't drop out, carefully dip the ramekin in a bowl of warm water to loosen it.”

A note on panna cotta: the gelatine does tend to set harder and harder as the hours pass, which is probably why all those restaurants served cold milky jelly bricks so, if you’re making it for a special affair, try to eat it on the same day to enjoy a just-set cream rather than a wobbly chunk worthy of lobbing at someone’s head (Promise I haven’t ever done this. Yet.)

All the Milk Moon Faces of May

There were a dozen moons that night. She counted them from the wheelbarrow as George raced them around  the edges of the barley fields, a stray blade tucked between his teeth in concentration, his hands clutching both handles. Laughing in delight, counting one, two, three, four, each moon greeted her with a different expression: the peekaboo moon slotted between the trees; the gawping orb weighted on the horizon; the undulating glimmer; all the milk moon faces of May.

The sirens sounded, catching in the turn of the wheels, howling as if they were drawn from the mouth of the moon and only rising in insistence as they spun in the direction of safety. Again they raced only this time with an urgency that frightened Celia deeply, feeling the sharp jolts from the earth that ran with them, jarring her vision. Caught in momentum the only constant in sight was the horizon now divided in daggers of menacing umbra and quaking light. The moon arrested her in different expression; bleeding in dissolution; screaming in constant fracture; gathering form again in permanence; bearing witness unblinking.

Many hours later, now safe in bed, Celia found herself in darkness with the tide of her heartbeat swelling in her ears and eyes illuminated from light glowing at the curtains that hinted at the now still moon of inescapable scrutiny; of endless mother’s milk; the moon of eternal knowing; the moon of countless faces. Here she was a daughter, later a mother, and later still my grandmother, passing a near century of perspective before she was gone. This night and every night yet that I am, the glow is at the curtains and it reaches from one generation to the next blazing with our infinite womanly context.

Other Reads You Might Like:

Early Spring Supper with Celia >

It Takes a City, a Village, and Some Long Gone People to Bake a Pie >

Alun’s Emergency Chocolate Cake >

Love Looks An Awful Lot Like Jelly >

A Tasty Sounding Buttermilk Panna Cotta from Cook Til Delicious >