Make Your Own Artisan Ricotta Cheese – It’s Easy!

I’ve always wanted to try cheesemaking, and I recently found a recipe for homemade ricotta cheese that was originally published in the now-shuttered Gourmet magazine. Creative Director Richard Ferretti’s recipe was so simple, it gave me the courage to make a batch — no rennet or thermometers needed! Since then I’ve made several pounds of this creamy cheese, and EVERYONE (everyone, I tell you) begs for the recipe. (Everyone.) So here we go.

First, line a sieve with a double layer of cheesecloth and place it in a bowl like this: 

Next,  bring 1 quart of milk, 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1/4 teaspoon of salt to a rolling boil in a heavy saucepan. (By the way, I only make half of Ferretti’s recipe at a time because I am trying, trying to keep my butt from getting as big as a barn.)

Now, you add 1 1/2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, reduce the heat to low, and simmer — stirring constantly — until the mixture curdles, about 2 minutes. It looks sort of gross at this point, but stay with me.

Now, simply dump the whole mess into that nice cheesecloth-lined sieve, like this:

Errrgh!  Let it drain for about an hour, and you’ll have a nice batch of ricotta that looks something like this:

Transfer the ricotta to a tightly lidded container and refrigerate it. For a crazy good snack, spread it on lightly toasted slices of French bread, sprinkle with salt and pepper and top with sliced fresh tomatoes or roasted red peppers. It’s also wonderful spread on crackers and topped with a drizzle of olive oil and Balsamic vinegar. Or spread it on hot buttered toast and drizzle with honey or sprinkle with a little cinnamon sugar for a completely decadent breakfast. Ferretti says to eat it within 2 days, which shouldn’t be difficult to do.

Have you tried making your own cheese? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences.

——————————————————————————————-

You might also enjoy:

Make Your Own Tender, Perfectly Puffed Pita Breads – For Pennies

The Best Gingersnaps on the Planet

——————————————————————————————-

Follow my updates on Twitter (elizacross) and Facebook.

Organic Mint Pesto from the Garden’s Final Basil Crop

A dusting of snow covers the mint plants in the garden

It’s snowing here in Colorado today, and in anticipation of last night’s hard freeze I picked all the basil. I’ll use it to prepare a fresh variation on pesto sauce enlivened with fresh mint. The pesto freezes well and I portion it into 1/3 cup servings so that we can easily thaw a little to toss with hot linguine, whisk into salad dressing, or spread on a pizza when summertime is a distant memory. Here’s the simple recipe:

Fresh Minted Pesto Sauce

1 1/2 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves (no stems)

1/4 cup loosely packed mint leaves, no stems

1/4 cup fresh parsley

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

1/4 cup blanched almonds

4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

4 to 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put the basil, mint, parsley, garlic and almonds in a food processor. Blend at low speed for a few moments until the ingredients are coarsely chopped. Add the cheese and half of the olive oil and blend again. Scrape the mixture down from the side of the container. Turn the speed to low and trickle in the remaining olive oil while blending. By hand, stir in salt and pepper to taste. Makes 1 cup.

Make Your Own Peach Preserves

The peaches this year have been more delicious than any I can ever remember — heavy, fragrant, juicy and sweet from the sunshine of late summer.

A display of Colorado peaches at Whole Foods

Before they’re gone, you can easily preserve fresh peaches’ fleeting, nectared essance by making a batch of homemade jam.  Perfect for holiday gift giving, I also love opening a jar of homemade jam on a snowy winter morning, slathering it on a hot, buttery biscuit and being transported back to sweet memories of the previous summer.

I used to make jam the old-fashioned way, standing at the stove for hours boiling and stirring the mixture and trying to keep it from scorching.  Recently I made a batch

Cool Off with Homemade Naturally Sweet Tea

 

     Most store-bought sweetened iced teas are full of it — high fructose corn syrup, that is — and the ‘light’ versions are loaded with artificial sweeteners. Instead, make your own cool, delicious sweetened tea with natural ingredients and you’ll reap all of the antioxidant health benefits while keeping unnessary bottles out of the landfill; you’ll also save money! 

Make Your Own Tender, Perfectly Puffed Pita Breads – for Pennies!

After reading about homemade pita bread on the King Arthur Flour blog, I was obsessed with making a batch from scratch. I love pita bread, but I was spoiled years ago by warm, fresh-from-the-oven pitas in Athens and have never found anything close here in Colorado. Even at one of Denver’s largest Middle Eastern grocery stores, the pitas are chewy and a bit cardboardy.

Using the King Arthur recipe as a guideline (and based on research that recommended a mix of no more than 33% whole wheat flour for reliable rising), I substituted 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of spelt flour for one cup of the all-purpose flour. I didn’t have any King Arthur’s Dough Improver so I added a pinch of baking powder. Once the dough was ready to bake, I divided it into 8 portions and flattened the first ball slightly with my fingers like this:

Homemade Hooch at the Urban Homestead

We’ve been harvesting currants here, and even the ripest berries are intensely, mouth-puckeringly tart. After scratching my head about how to best utilize the little red berries, I found a recipe for homemade cassis and knew we were in business. I love kir (a drink made with cassis and white wine) and its cousin kir royale (cassis and champagne). While crème de cassis is traditionally made with black currants, I learned that red currants can also be used.

This is a two-part recipe, and you can easily double this if you have a bounty of fresh currants.

Homemade Cassis

• 3 to 4 cups ripe currants
• 2 ½ to 3 cups vodka (or enough to cover the currants in the jar)
• 1 pound sugar (more or less may be needed) 
• 1 cup vodka (more or less may be needed)

Wash the currants, remove any stems and gently pour them in a one-quart Mason jar. Pour the vodka in the jar, almost to the top. Here’s how it looks at this stage: