we recently purchased the homemade pantry: 101 foods you can stop buying and start making and finally had a chance to try a recipe from it this past weekend. I literally want to make everything in this cookbook at some point (homemade pop tarts? sign me up), but we decided to start with something fairly simple – ricotta cheese.
ricotta is not an ingredient that we frequently buy, so I can’t offer much of a comparison to the store-bought stuff. but, having tasted homemade ricotta at a few restaurants, it’s always been something that i’ve wanted to try.
we were really pleased with how this turned out. it’s a very simple process of slowly heating whole milk (now would be a great time to splurge on some fresh milk from a local dairy), cream (optional), and lemon juice for about 45 minutes, and then turning up the heat for another 5 minutes to bring it to temperature. then, you’ll let it sit for 10 minutes, at which point you’ll have curds + whey. the curds are then strained through cheesecloth and a sieve, and what’s left on top is your ricotta. we salted ours lightly and ate it with baguette and honey – simple and perfect. you’ll have quite a bit of whey left over – this can be frozen and used within 6 months in smoothies, etc.
if you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, here’s the full recipe.
First of all, I’m asking for this cookbook for Christmas! And second, I thought it might be worth sharing that I saw a similar recipe, but she mixed the ‘cheese’ with fresh fruit to make flavored cream cheese. Haven’t tried it myself yet, but it looked devine!
that sounds delicious, we will definitely have to try that sometime!