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.

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You might also enjoy:

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

The Best Gingersnaps on the Planet

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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:

Make Your Own Granola – Delicious, Healthy and Inexpensive!

Here’s a simple recipe that you can use to make your own healthy breakfast cereal. You can use organic and/or vegetarian ingredients if you wish, and substitute other goodies to suit your taste. Plus — with the cost of organic rolled oats at about $1 a pound — you can save tons of money by making your own!

 

Here’s the basic recipe for my favorite granola blend. I call it Oatmeal Cookie Granola and your kitchen will smell just like homemade oatmeal raisin cookies while you’re baking it!

Culinary Glory During a Recession

I was perusing our cookbooks this morning hoping for some culinary inspiration, when I came across this volume gathering dust at the back of the very top shelf:

Gourmet Cooking on a Shoestring, circa 1970

Although it was published almost 40 years ago, the theme of this book is certainly relevant today. “It is true that the price of absolutely everything is on the rise…” it begins, and the author goes on to offer a host of recipes “to take the sting out of the high cost of eating while covering you with culinary glory.”

Culinary glory — now that’s what I’m talking about! Of course, we had a somewhat different definition

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:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easy, Slow-Cooked Caramelized Onions

I once read that you could make a batch of caramelized onions in the Crock Pot and freeze them, but I couldn’t find a recipe. So I decided to experiment and see if I could figure out the process. I knew I wanted pieces of onion, not stringy slices, so I peeled and cut 5 yellow onions like this:

Here’s how they looked prior to cooking:

 I tossed them with 1/4 cup of melted butter (I’m sure you could also use olive oil instead), a generous sprinkling of salt, several generous grindings of black pepper, and a teaspoon of sugar to jump-start the caramelizing process. Then I set the temperature on Low. After 4 hours of cooking, they looked like this:

After 8 hours of cooking, they were nicely browned, wonderfully sweet and caramelized. They had reduced down to about two cups:

I divided them into four 1/2 cup portions and froze them in freezer bags. The portions thaw quickly and the onions are absolutely terrific on pizzas and bruschetta. I’ve also added them to homemade spaghetti sauce and soup. Using the slow cooker is much easier than standing at the stove and cooking and stirring the onions, and I love having caramelized onions ready to go in the freezer. All in all, I would say this experiment was a big success!

The Best Gingersnaps on the Planet

I woke up in a baking mood today (perhaps it’s the pending snowstorm that’s supposed to hit tonight) and decided to make some gingersnaps. These are an adaptation of the “Elevator Lady Spice Cookies” from “The I Hate to Cook Book,” by Peg Bracken, published in 1960. I’ve always loved Peg’s sassy writing style and unfussy recipes, and my mom, sister and I have been making these cookies for decades.

Once I made a batch with blackstrap molasses because I didn’t have any ‘baking’ molasses in the cupboard. The flavor was so drastically improved, I’ve never gone back. And then I found a bag of Australian crystallized ginger at the little gourmet food shop and tried chopping it and mixing it in the recipe. The result is a nice little crunch in the chewy cookie and a very bright ginger taste that dances in the mouth…definitely a worthy addition.

Last year I read a recipe for “Triple Ginger Cookies,” that also called for minced fresh ginger to be added to a ginger cookie batter. I tried that in this recipe, too, and concluded that the fresh ginger was sort of lost in translation. Plus, peeling and mincing fresh ginger is no walk in the park. But if you want to try it sometime, add a tablespoon and a half of minced fresh ginger to the recipe. One other caveat:  these gingersnaps don’t exactly “snap,” because they’re tender and chewy. Just let me know if you think they’re the best you’ve ever eaten.

3/4 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup blackstrap molasses (you can substitute regular molasses)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
3/4 teaspoon powdered cloves
1/2 cup chopped crystallized ginger
extra granulated sugar for rolling

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Mix the shortening, sugar, egg and molasses together in a medium bowl until well-blended. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix the dry ingredients into the egg mixture and stir until well blended. Add the chopped crystallized ginger and mix well. The mixture will be somewhat sticky and can be refrigerated for a little while, but it’s not necessary. Roll into balls using a dining teaspoon*. Roll in granulated sugar. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Makes about 3 dozen.

*You can also make these into larger cookies, using a dining tablespoon as your measure. After you arrange the balls on the baking sheet, flatten them a little with your fingers so they’ll spread more easily when they bake. After you flatten them, sprinkle the tops with a little more sugar to replace the sugar that came off on your fingers, and then bake as usual. This recipe will yield about 18 oversized cookies.

Better Butter

The new “spreadable” butters contain butter and canola oil, and promise “Soft Even When Cold!” “Low in saturated fats and cholesterol!” and “No transfatty acids!” At my local grocery store, an 8-ounce plastic tub of Challenge Spreadable Butter sells for $2.49. We make our own instead, for about 80 cents. Simply whisk together one softened 4-ounce stick of butter (I buy it on sale and freeze it, when it’s $2.50 a pound, or 63 cents a stick) and ½ cup of canola oil (about 17 cents) and add a little salt if you like. Spoon it into a container, cover and chill in the refrigerator. Makes 1 cup.