When I was young, licking the beaters on the hand mixer or the empty bowl and spatula after a cake was safely in the oven was the reward for watching your mom prepare it. Sometimes, with 4 siblings you had to be smarter or meaner to claim the prize. I generally gave up on the challenge. My youngest twin brothers were too 'cute' to push out of the way. Don't get me wrong, occasionally they were morons and I felt no shame in being the bigger sister who could outreach or outsmart them. I don't want them to be reading this and think I was a complete pushover.
Instead of cake batter leftovers, I found an even better alternative in ricotta cheese. There was never a shortage of ricotta cheese in our house. In fact, I'm not sure I even knew what cottage cheese was until I went to college. I recall one afternoon when one of our non-Italian neighbors said that they prepared lasagna with cottage cheese. There was an audible gasp from my mom, my aunt and other Italian ladies in the room.....pure sacrilege. In our home, ricotta was always being mixed into some kind of pasta or pastry. So, instead of cake batters, I developed an even fonder affection for the remnants of the ricotta cheese mixtures that weren't yet appreciated by the youngest in our family. It didn't matter if it was savory vs. sweet. If it had ricotta in it, it had to be good.
I was only familiar with the version of ricotta cheese that my mom used at that time....which came in the plastic containers from the local Giant Food Store. At that time, I'm not sure that the plastic container versions had all of the stabilizers and gum additives...probably not. From my humble perspective, it was good and it was the only version I knew.
The first time I experienced fresh ricotta rocked my world. We were visiting our Italian neighbor's mom somewhere outside NYC. She was at least 80 years old and could only speak a few words of English. I was 16 and the trip included a whirlwind first visit to NYC and LITTLE ITALY (I'll definitely save this one for another blog because Mulberry Street at that time was like a trip to Naples!!!)
Every morning this wonderful lady would toast her homemade Italian bread and put a jar of creamy homemade ricotta cheese on the table in lieu of butter. This was just a teaser to hold you over until the rest of the household got out of bed and assembled at the table. Bread and cheese was ultimately followed by fritattas and salamis and pastries from the local Italian market. However, I was content with the ricotta cheese and bread and would wake up earlier each day to make sure that I could sit with this wonderful lady for longer periods of time to watch her do her thing as she prepped breakfast while I consumed a half loaf of bread with cheese.
Everyone on that trip spoke Italian except me. If I was the first one up in the morning to greet our host, the communication was scant if you counted the number of words exchanged. But, the big expressions and gestures we exchanged were otherwise abundant. We communicated like this every day. At some point in time on that trip, I'm pretty sure I could understand everything she was saying to me. I guess 10 Italian staccato words that ended in 'mangia' made it pretty easy to assume she was telling me what she had made as she pushed it in my direction to eat.
On our last morning with her, she put a harder piece of cheese on the table. It was sweet, tangy and salty. I found out it was the hard version of ricotta. I was in love with this lady. I could have moved in and been a really happy fat teenager if she would let me. I put a slice of that cheese on a piece of her crunchy, thick crusted bread and then she pushed her homemade lemon marmalade in my direction. Her eyes never left my face while I ate with the appetite of an athlete. I knew that she knew that I was a kindred spirit. That trip opened my eyes to the reality that I would be going home to a lesser form of ricotta cheese. It was heartbreaking.
On future trips to Italy or NYC, I would seek out and gorge on ricotta whenever I got the chance. Grocery store versions in the plastic containers were something I started to tolerate. It was hard to avoid the ones made with carrageenan. Googling carrageenan only confirmed why I hate ricotta made with it:
- Carrageenans are a family of linear sulfated polysaccharides that are extracted from red edible seaweeds. They are widely used in the food industry, for their gelling, thickening, and stabilizing properties. Some evidence exists that carrageenan triggers inflammation, gastrointestinal ulcerations, and that it damages your digestive system.
My brother, Mike, and I made homemade mozzarella a few years ago. The end result was a small ball of mozzarella but the kitchen reflected hard evidence that we had made it ourselves. There were piles of dirty pans, colanders, spilled and burnt milk on the stove. Gallons of milk went into this experiment but when it was all done, there was less than 16 ounces of fresh mozzarella. The cheese curd separates from the milk, you are left with lots of watery whey and smaller curds. We weren't aware that if you save this watery residue, you could make ricotta. It went down the drain.
I wanted to avoid the need to get to the whey product created by making mozzarella (which will be an experiment in another blog) in order to make fresh ricotta. There's a simple process to get a fairly good replica of authentic ricotta cheese. This less authentic version is really really good and far outweighs anything you can get from the big brand plastic container versions. It involves heating milk. Do not use Ultra Pasteurized milk!! There's an unnecessary chemistry conversation that I will avoid but trust me that it will not yield the results you want. Once heated to a temp of about 185 degrees, you add an acid (preferably distilled white vinegar but you can use lemon juice if you want a lemony flavor). You stir it once and curds form. You then leave it alone. This is hard but you really just leave it untouched for 20 minutes while you monitor the heat to keep it within 10 degrees in either direction. This 20 minutes gives the flavor to your ricotta. If you scoop it earlier, it tastes like cooked milk. If the temp hovers too long in the 165 degree range, you'll get less volume. If it hovers in the 195 degree range, you get a drier grainier version. Aim for 185 degrees for 20 minutes and the fiddling with the pan will occupy your time while you wait. I hovered over the thermometer like it was the countdown on a nuclear warhead. I lifted the pan off the heat and put it back to keep the temp pretty perfect. At the 20 minute mark, you gently scoop out the curds with a slotted spoon and drain for about 10-20 minutes depending on the texture and creaminess you want. It's so easy, it's literally fullproof...so here come the fat pants!
Ingredients:
8 cups of whole milk (do not use ultra pasteurized!)
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons of distilled white vinegar
- Pour milk into pan and heat to 185 degrees
- Add vinegar when the temp reaches 185 degrees. Stir it until you see the curds start to emerge. Hide your spoon and don't stir it again.
- Hold the curds for 20 minutes at 185 degree. Move the pan on and off the burner to keep the temp as close to 185 as possible. At the end of 20 minutes, gently move the curds from the pan to a cheesecloth lined strainer using a slotted spoon. Let most of the liquid strain back into the pan.
- Let the ricotta curds drain for about just a few minutes depending on how creamy you want your final ricotta. Note the weight scale below. You'll get about 14-16 ounces of ricotta from 8 cups of milk. That's about 2 cups.
- Lastly, put that watery residue back into the milk container and freeze it for using in soups, rice dishes, etc. It's a slightly sweet milky flavor....really nice alternative for chicken stock.
That's it!!!! I was lazy today so no big Italian cooking experiment going. Instead, I wanted to blog about how to make ricotta because for such a simple recipe, it's killer. I've recently worked on a few complicated things that required ricotta so wanted to share the success I had in making it. It will not disappoint. Your lasagna, raviolis and pastries will thank you!
Buona Mangiata!
No comments:
Post a Comment