Homemade Ricotta
This is me and my pal Pierre A. Lamielle (wouldn’t it be cool to have the initials P.A.L.? I thought so too). He wrote a cookbook, then flew to Paris and got a big fancy award for it. Which he totally should have – Kitchen Scraps is bloody brilliant. It’s like no other cookbook you’ve ever seen – totally readable in bed, good for a laugh, each page a literal work of art. Stories, jokes, morals, humour. Whorehouses, the three bears, cupids, Roman soldiers with six-packs – it’s got it all.
So to celebrate I got a copy to give away for that happy event of days gone by we used to call Free Stuff Fridays. I figured it would only be fitting to make something from his book for dinner tonight, but Mike had a show, W has a birthday party (he got his first real invite from a kid at school – not a relative or friend of ours – sniff) and I went to get a sneak peek at the new CHAR CUT (it opens on Monday!) and then to judge the Lawson Lundell Celebrity Hors d’ Oeuvres Competition (a fundraiser for ATP) – which is my long way of saying there was no need to cook dinner tonight. And tomorrow night we have a fabulously cheesy dinner party to attend (don’t worry – you’ll get a full report) – so I had resigned to making a batch of brownies (not much of a let down, that) when I noticed instructions on how to make ricotta down at the bottom of a page containing a risotto recipe.
I’ve made mozzarella from scratch before, and pseudo-mascarpone, but ricotta has been on my to-make list for eons. I love how Pierre’s recipe fits in a little box – this is why we get on so well – he doesn’t use too many words. (And the words he does use are well-thought and hilarious.) Making ricotta is not at all complicated, nor does it require rennet tablets or other odd ingredients called for in other cheese-making processes, and I did it while unloading groceries. Dumped a 4L jug of whole milk into a pot and cranked it up as I unpacked, and when it came to a simmer pulled it off the heat, stirred in 1/4 cup of vinegar (you could use lemon juice, even – but Pierre says plain vinegar is the most neutral) and lidded it for an hour. Longer, in fact, because I completely forgot about it, and when I got out of the shower with 10 minutes before I had to leave and remembered the ricotta I ran down to the kitchen in my robe and scooped the curds out of the pot into a sieve to strain, not even bothering with cheesecloth. And it worked: I had freshly-made ricotta.
(They whey, by the way, is very nutritious – don’t dump it out, but keep it to use in pancakes, muffins, waffles etc. – I funneled it back into the milk jug and still had about 2 1/2L.)
So to recap:
Homemade Ricotta
Bring 4L whole milk to a simmer (190°F) in a large pot. Remove from heat, add 1/4 cup white vinegar, stirring only once. Put the lid on and leave it for an hour. Gently scoop out the curds with a slotted spoon into a sieve (Pierre suggested a cheescloth-lined colander, which would work too, but if you don’t have cheesecloth no biggie) – if you like, let it sit in the sieve overnight in the fridge to drain – you can leave it until it’s as dry as you like. Keep the whey in the fridge and use it for baking, soup, etc. Makes about 1 lb. fresh ricotta.
And now, as it’s well past midnight and I’m far too busy digesting far too many different types of animal (11 restaurants x 2 or 3 hors d’oeuvres each, and some I might have had seconds and thirds of) I can’t tell you about them all. But I do want to mention the ones that really stood out – the winners we chose, and the things I ate most of – chef Darby Kells from the Concorde Restolounge in Aspen Woods made killer braised lamb shank tarts with brandy soaked cherries and wild game reduction – the reduction takes him 3 days to cook down into an essence of meat with the consistency of maple syrup – and the lamb shank is braised at 250 degrees for a full 8 hours. Marvy. The Main Dish did cherry pink bacon with aged cheddar on grilled panini topped with cherry braised pork belly (AND HOW DID I MISS OUT ON SECONDS OF THAT?) chased by sour cherry ice cream floats. Dandy. Open Range made Mexican tamales with braised beef and cheddar, wrapped in banana leaves – open faced duck ravioli and espresso ice cream on flat, chewy chocolate chip cookies. But the most memorable thing I ate tonight was the pink lemonade cocktail (served in a shot glass) topped with a strawberry-mascarpone Swiss roll covered in Pop Rocks – yes, Pop Rocks! – created by Kristin, Mariah and Jenna of Trader’s Grill in the Marriott. It may sound hideous, but it totally worked – the sweetness of the cake followed by an intensely sour shot of lemonade, and the Pop Rocks – it was like the scene in Ratatouille when Anton Ego takes a bite and is instantly sucked through a wormhole to his childhood. They popped pleasantly in our mouths – not noisily, as they do straight – up – adding a sort of effervescence to the experience. It was fab. And so rare to come across something edible that was totally original!
So – it being the bleak midwinter and all (in Calgary, anyway), and my freezer once again overfloweth, I thought I’d start a new game next week – another rousing rendition of Name That Frozen Baggie. I really do need to reduce the contents of my freezer, and so thought we could have some fun with it – so next week I’m going to pull stuff out in the morning and post it on Twitter, and see if anyone can guess what’s for dinner that night…
And so for Free Stuff Fridays – for a copy of Pierre’s fabulous new cookbook, Kitchen Scraps, what’s in your freezer?
February 20 2010 | cheese | 110 Comments »
