Hey Becky-
As of this week, it's safe to say that my 8 week cooking rut has been broke... there has been seriously awesome food made in this kitchen. I'll post a few entries describing each, but right now I'm most excited about my home-made ricotta cheese! The recipe was in a Bon Appetit from March, and I just now got around to trying it out. And for how easy it was to make, you'd think all the celebrity chefs on the Food Network would use it as a parlor trick. The end result? Fresh, creamy cheese- I like it best when it's still warm :)
Start with 8 c whole milk and 2 c buttermilk in a big pot on high heat. Stir for 7-8 minutes...when the liquid is nearly at a boil, the curds will separate from the whey. Take it off the heat, skim the curds off the top with a slotted spoon into a layer of cheesecloth over a strainer. Squeeze very gently (or you'll have dry cheese, ew)... then drain 20 mins. Put in a bowl with a dash of salt, chill, and you have home-made ricotta. It takes more time to heat an instant lasagna than to make this cheese.
Curious- ricotta in some form was probably one of the first cheeses. Isn't it urban legend that cheese was discovered when nomads stored sheep's milk in animal bladders. Rennet from the bladders separated the curds from the whey... and now we're using buttermilk as rennet :)
The Salted Lemon by Anna Fishman and Becky Ong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
No comments:
Post a Comment