ArcaMax

Ask me one of the secrets of a great dessert and I'll give you an answer that at first may sound like a cliche: It should melt in your mouth.

But I really mean that. Close your eyes. Now, think about a dessert flavor, whether chocolate, vanilla, citrus, cinnamon or some other favorite.

Keep your eyes closed. And imagine the feeling of a spoonful of that dessert actually melting as it sits on your tongue. No biting. No chewing. It just dissolves, flooding your senses with pleasure.

Is your mouth watering yet? Then panna cotta would be a great dessert for you.

The name literally means "cooked cream" in Italian. And that's basically what it is: a mixture of hot cream and milk, sweetened with sugar, flavored and then mixed with gelatin, which brings it to a softly solid state when chilled. To the untrained eye, the results look similar to custard or creme brulee (without the topping of burnt sugar), but no eggs are included. And panna cotta is more meltingly delicate than any custard you've ever tried.

While it's always been available in fancy Italian restaurants, panna cotta has become more mainstream lately, appearing in all sorts of forms on dessert menus everywhere. It has even migrated to other courses. At my steakhouse Cut, which opened last year at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, we even make a fresh horseradish-flavored version as a surprising base for our shrimp cocktail.

However you flavor a panna cotta, one trick to making it just right -- not too firm to the point of being rubbery, not so soft that it doesn't even set properly -- is to include the right proportion of gelatin to cream, generally about 1-1/2 teaspoons to 3 cups for a standard version made with cream and milk. But along with the gelatin, I like to add body to my own panna cotta using other methods as well. In my recipe here for Lemon Marmalade Panna Cotta, you'll find fresh ricotta cheese (available in well-stocked markets and Italian delis) and whipped cream along with the gelatin, resulting in an especially luscious consistency.

As easy as all panna cottas are to make, cooks in both home and professional kitchens often face one big pitfall: unmolding the dessert before serving it. I've found the perfect solution. I simply don't unmold it. Instead, I pour the mixture into beautiful martini glasses partly filled with fresh berries, then leave them to chill. The finished desserts literally sparkle. And there's room left over in the glass to add a drizzle of fresh berry sauce, chocolate shavings or sauce, or any other embellishment you might like.

The results, needless to say, will melt in your mouth!

LEMON MARMALADE PANNA COTTA WITH FRESH BERRIES AND RASPBERRY SAUCE

Makes about 3-1/2 cups, 8 servings

LEMON MARMALADE PANNA COTTA:

1 cup heavy cream

10 ounces milk

1/2 cup sugar

1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise, scraped

2/3 cup fresh ricotta cheese

1-1/4 teaspoons plain gelatin powder, dissolved in 3 tablespoons room-temperature tap water

2 tablespoons lemon marmalade or orange marmalade, peels finely minced

1 pound assorted fresh berries

RASPBERRY SAUCE:

2 pints fresh or frozen raspberries

1/2 cup sugar

1 to 2 tablespoons lemon juice

In a saucepan, combine half of the heavy cream with all of the milk and sugar. (Keep the remaining cream refrigerated.) With a small, sharp knife, carefully cut the vanilla bean in half; then, use the knife's tip to scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean halves into the pan, and add the scraped bean halves, too. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium high heat, stirring occasionally. Turn off the heat and, with a wire whisk, briskly whisk in the ricotta.

Place a metal mixing bowl inside a larger bowl filled with ice cubes, and rest a fine-meshed strainer above the metal bowl. Pour the hot mixture into the strainer and press it through with a rubber spatula. Add the dissolved gelatin and slowly whisk it into the cooling mixture. Leave to cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, put the remaining cream in a clean mixing bowl. With a hand-held electric mixer on medium speed, whip the cream just until soft peaks form when the beaters are stopped and lifted out.

With the spatula, gently fold the whipped cream into the mixture. Finally, fold in the marmalade.

Place 8 martini glasses on a tray. Divide the mixed berries among them. Spoon the panna cotta mixture into the glasses to cover the berries, dividing it evenly and smoothing its surface. Put the tray of filled glasses in the refrigerator to chill for about 1 hour.

Meanwhile, make the raspberry puree. Combine the raspberries, sugar and 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the berries release their liquid, the sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until the berries have formed a thick puree, 7 to 10 minutes. Pour through a fine-meshed strainer into a heatproof bowl, pressing it through with a rubber spatula and discarding the seeds from the strainer. Taste and, if necessary, stir in some more lemon juice. Cover and refrigerate.

When the panna cottas have chilled for 1 hour, spoon the raspberry puree evenly over their surfaces. Return to the refrigerator and chill until completely set, at least 1 hour more. Serve chilled.