Pannacotta or Pannawonica

Is that the way you spell it? I've not actually ever seen it in real life. That delicate and curvacious blancmange of sweet purity. Pannawonica, the mining town, many times. Pannacotta, never. Last week I bought eight dairole moulds. I love the way little metal cups are glazed with the most delicate film of chill as they gain traction in the fridge, fortifying the coconut, the milk, the cream. Yet, never in my fridge. We don't usually do dessert. Well, we do. For our daughters' sake. Their idea of second course is a slice of honey on grain bread. The teensiest cup (almost trickery to call it a cup) of frozen berries. That's all it takes to deck the face, arms and relative bodily paraphernalia with the bloody purple drippings of blue or straw or black or rasberry juice. By bathtime, tribal warcries are upon us. 'More berries?!More be-rries!' by froggy legged white warriors bedecked head to toe in juicy oozings, lush, dark and ripe.
But that's it. I don't actually 'COOK' dessert. Didn't. I correct myself. Until a few weeks ago when I decided that, as I'm approaching the austerity of 40, I'm announcing to any available audience (mirror, swimming pool, sandpit, kitchen window) that I am going to begin dining us fine. Fine and dandy. Cordon Bleu fine. Fin. That is 'end' in French? Finished? And I hope it's not going to end for a while, as it's the release I'd not expected come witching hour. In fact, by aiming to do dessert, or to formally 'plate up and polish' everything from sausages to flour baked fish 'n chips, I'm actively embracing that which has become a chore. A curse into a blessing. A thief of time into a gift.
Nope. Not Poh (whoever Poh is). Not Ramsay (and no intention of going there). Not even Monica Trapaga (joining the excrementally insane list of B list celebrities to write their own cookbook.)Moi. Mummy. Me.
Eldest daughter again last night. 'So are there lots of people in the world with the same name?' My nod in reply. 'Ok,' she continued. 'Lots of people called K-?' A further nod. 'And E-?' Mmmhmmm. 'And there are lots of people called Mummy?' Wry grin.
So this person called 'Mummy' is doing something special. For doesn't 'cooking by a lady named Mummy' indicate a feast of regular meat and three veg, frozen fish and chips, boiled peas and carrots, sausages, poached eggs and baked beans on a Sunday night AND ALL WITH SAUCE?
Mummy is keeping her name, but sneaking in a good drop of remembrance of self (dissolved in a nightly chardonnay) and embracing her inner chef. She's cooking with love. Yes, for the family, but moreso for the lost island she swam from, with gusto, from the minute she entered her twenties.
Pannawonica is a closed mining town two hours drive south of Karratha in the north west Pilbara region of Western Australia. Along the way, one meets roos, moos and 'mus (Emus). Should one be blessed, none of these are flying at your windscreen at an unexpected moment. Pannawonica is down the road to the right, marked by a baby haulpak, the vehicular insignia of this region. A haulpak is large and yellow. Imagine a child's most favourite Tonka truck and put it on steroids for, say, a decade, then soak it in water so it bloats and bloats until it is then the size of a two storey building. This is a haulpak. I have driven to Pannawonica with my partner in a Holden Astra. It stood like a child's toilet step stool beside the grand machine. And it whimpered.
Note, I said 'baby' haulpak. The big mother haulpaks are Trucks By God. One might fill their buckets with the hose and convince people it's a luminous yellow, three storey swimming pool.
Pannawonica is the small haulpak of mining towns in this region. You live there to work. And when the work's done, you hitch a ride out on a haulpak, never to return. Workers can eat at 'The Tavern' and, among other holistic pursuits, might join the town library, the size of a matchbox and similarly jampacked with its heady literary wares. Or swim in the Panna pool. Bliss in forty degrees with a mere manly lifeguard to accompany your afternoon soiree. But it's the Tavern for me which defined my nights in Pannawonica. Namely, the evening fare. Yes, you can go serve yourself from the all you can eat bistro conveyor (I recall plenty of corn and cabbage and incredible salads and meats and gob sloppy, wonderful apple crumble). But what always did me in was the bruschetta. It would transport me. Virgin oil in more than medicinal doses, cascading through lush tomato chunks and the sweetest basil, garlic, seasoned just enough to save the arteries from final peril. Pannawonica, a la carte, would become my Italy. There was no reason, as I slurped and crunched my way through the heady deliruium of ripe flavours, I should believe myself anywhere else.
If bruschetta can do one's head in in a thickset, isolated iron ore depository such as the wonderful Pannawonica, then there's no reason I shouldn't be able to achieve the same a bit further up the road.
Guests for dinner this evening. Again, bombsite down the corridor. But, Pannawonica inspired, tonight is the pannacotta night of my dreams. And even should my dessert fail techinically, once I have my ingredients and have congregated my selves around the bowl, we shall be queens of the kitchen.