Ricotta Be Kiddin' Me!

Autumn is here and despite her fever, I am wearing sweaters, crocheted hats, and donning all the ambers and sepias of fall. Along with these aesthetics come the autumnal comforts of my mom's apple crisp, apple cinnamon tea, and the desire to bring all the neon leaves, acorns, walnuts, and twigs into my little apartment. However, the leaves aren't quite here yet, still green and unwilling to detach. My rolling Pennsylvania hills are still lush unless you cruise farther up 99 toward State College where the bronzes and neons are unfurling at the higher elevations.

But despite her shyness, her amazing light is here, casting everything in golden green hues during the magical hours before sunset. Lately, it has been during those magical hours that I have been inside either baking banana bread, making homemade butter, baking my mother's apple crisp, and today--I have made cheese for the first time. I hope to be getting outside more soon, when the temperatures are lower.

I love dairy. Cheese, its sharpness, its mellowness, its chemistries of melt and curdle. These past few days, I have marveled at the amount of physical, brute force it takes to make cheese and to make butter. So little ingredients, so much force and fire! Yesterday, while my apple crisp was baking in the oven, I simply walked around my apartment, shaking a jar half full of heavy whipping cream. The small jar jerking up and down in my right hand, the vacuum being driven with my left. After fifteen minutes, I opened the jar, not quite happy with the texture yet. It was the consistency of melted butter, unsure of which way it wanted to go. So, then came the left hand. I shook until I felt my whole body quiver with the butter's creation. The swish and sloggle within the jar in my hands turned into a plick and plop of creamy, off-white thickness.

The satisfaction!

So much satisfaction in opening that small jar and seeing the waves and whirls of creamy, whipped butter! I added a pinch of salt, stirred with the handle of a butter knife, and bollocks, it was delicious. I ate it on a toasted English muffin this morning as I watched the darkness on the other side of the window fade.

I couldn't help but wonder, though, how the simple violent shaking of whipping cream (great name) thickens into creamy butter? Well, the whipping cream is filled with fat globules and these fat globules have protective walls to protect them from such things as water (because water "fears" fat). Shaking the whipping cream then deconstructs those protective walls, forcing the fats (triglycerides if you want to be technical) to gather together, causing the delicious thickening.

So, today I made cheese for the first time. I want to make stuffed shells at some point this weekend, so I decided to make ricotta. So, here is the recipe if you'd like to try.

Ricotta Be Kiddin' Me!

What You'll Need: 1/2 gallon of whole milk, 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, a pinch of salt, one lemon, cheese cloth or muslin

1. Bring milk, cream, and salt to a roiling boil over high/medium heat in a large pot. Be sure to stir constantly in order to prevent scalding. You will notice some slight curdling, so don't go thinking that you have foreign weirdness floating in your pot. It's cheese. Also, once it starts boiling, you'll notice immediate foaming which may flow over the top of your pot, so be careful. Don't be discouraged if you're not noticing a lot of curdling because it's the next step where the magic happens.

2. Once it's boiling, lower the heat and add the juice of one lemon. Magically, the citric acid expedites the curdling process. It's amazing to watch. Why does lemon make the concoction curdle? Well, I'll explain the best I can. You know how you hear about drinking milk in order to ease acidity in the stomach? Well, if you remember from chemistry class, milk is considered a "base" substance, which means that it's pretty much the opposite of acid. Anyway, the addition of the citric acid (the lemon) does the same thing that shaking causes butter. It causes the gathering and coagulation of what science calls "caseins". Coagulation means thickening, so there you go.

3. Have some wine. I popped open a bottle of Montezuma Fat Frog Red, purchased for me by a friend from work. It's wonderful if you like sweet, red concords.

4. After stirring the lemon juice into the boiled milk for about three minutes, pour the concoction into a cheese cloth covered bowl. Keep in mind, you're not going to have a pot of ricotta immediately. It's going to be floating in one of Little Miss Muffet's favorite foods: whey. The curds will stay in the cheese cloth while the whey filters through and into the bowl.

5. Fold the cheese cloth into a little pouch and suspend over the bowl so that the rest of the whey can succumb to gravity. You'll get a lot of it! Let it suspend for about an hour and then store properly in the refrigerator. Use within three days for freshness and taste.

And let me say, it's delicious.

It took about 35 minutes to prepare and then an hour to to de-soak. It yields about 20 ounces and you end up with plenty of whey.

What do I do with all that whey?

Well, click here for there are many wheys to use it!

I'm personally interested in using it cosmetically, so I'm saving mine to make face masks and to condition my hair. However, making ginger ale sounds enticing! And you can always just make more ricotta with it because, well, the word ricotta does mean cooked twice.

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