bear with a wooden spoon

Homemade Ricotta, a photo by bearwithaspoon on Flickr.

I’ve finally managed to get my hands on “Comfort & Spice” by Niamh Shields, the author of the brilliant “Eat Like a Girl” blog, and it’s everything I expected and more – I think I want to make every single dish in there. Thumbing my way through it, the first thing that caught my eye, though – remembering that I’m on a bit of a DIY, or from scratch, trip at the moment with my bread, mincemeat etc. – was her recipe for homemade ricotta. It just seemed too easy to be true. Milk – check – salt – check – lemon – check – muslin square, oh…sh*t. Where on earth was I going to find muslin in Paris? I sent out a straining cloth S.O.S. on Twitter and, luckily, one friend had the answer – A. Simon on rue Montmartre, an Aladdin’s cave of culinary equipment. You name it, they have it, everything from chocolate moulds to chef’s hats. A bear could quite happily spend the whole day in there, but unfortunately, I only had my lunch hour. Now fully equipped, Plan Ricotta was all systems go – and you can see the results in the pic. About 220g of fresh “cheese” from a litre of full-fat fresh milk, plus a little cream. The method’s simple. Heat the milk, cream and a pinch of salt to 80°C – remove from the heat and add the juice of a small lemon, stir until curds and whey begin to form, then pour into the muslin bag to drain. I left mine to drain for an hour, which gave a nice fluffy texture. I think I’ll use it to make Niamh’s lemon and ricotta pancakes for breakfast. Miam!

Posted on December 6, 2011 at 00:28 in cookingfromscratch, homebaking   |  RSS feed |   Respond   |   Trackback URL