Homemade Ricotta

In the Encyclopedia of Pasta (2009), Oretta Zanini De Vita writes about cavatelli:

“[t]hese small masterpieces of pasta sculpture, which resemble little hats, immediately evoke Puglia, even if now they are typical of all the regions of the south, where they have acquired different names and are treated to different sauces. Their name derives from the curious shape obtained with skilled hands from a dough always made from durum wheat.” 

Today pasta makers use a broad range of wheat flour—from weak to strong—to craft cavatelli. Recently I mixed fine cloth-bolted pastry flour from Anson Mills with 00 flour with the aim of making a soft textured cavatelli. I have combined stoneground Sonora, a soft white winter flour, with extra fancy (aka fine) durum to create a chewier cavatelli. But the cavatelli dough that I run through my BeeBo cavatelli machine the most—at least lately—blends homemade ricotta and all-purpose flour. This post covers how I make ricotta. A follow-up post will share how I make ricotta cavatelli using a BeeBo cavatelli machine.

Homemade Ricotta

Making ricotta at home can be fast and easy. I employ a very simple method that takes around ½ hour to produce a cream-rich ricotta. I learned the technique during a pasta making course that I took back in 2011 from Thomas McNaughton, the chef/owner of flour + water in San Francisco’s Mission District. I’ve since tweaked his class recipe based upon a 2015 San Francisco Chronicle article about McNaughton’s ricotta. 

8 cups whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon kosher salt

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Place a colander inside a larger bowl, line the colander with cheesecloth, and set aside. Slowly bring the milk, cream, and salt to simmer in a heavy 6-quart pot over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes.

When the milk barely begins to simmer (about 180 to 200°F), add the lemon juice. Stir constantly until the mixture starts to curdle, about 4 more minutes.

Remove the pot from the heat. Do not simmer the milk after the curds begin to separate or the curds will become dense and dry. Allow the curds to rest for 10 minutes.

Pour the milk mixture into the lined colander to strain. The milk will have already formed hard curds — ricotta cheese. You can use it after 5 minutes because not much more moisture will be extracted by further draining.

An instant thermometer tells you when to combine the lemon juice and dairy. I add the lemon juice—or whatever acidic mixture I decide to use—when the dairy reaches 195°F.

I make another slight deviation from McNaughton’s recipe: instead of pouring the mixture into the colander, I lift the curds out of the pot with a stainless-steel spider strainer and place them in the cheesecloth-lined colander to drain for about 20 minutes.

I have a Breville/PolyScience Induction Range that I like to use when I make ricotta. The induction range uses its probe’s temperature reading to heat the milk and cream to exactly 195°F. I select the machine’s low intensity heat setting with probe control and insert the probe into the dairy mixture. The machine sounds when the dairy reaches 195°F and I stir in my acid. In my experience, the curds form very quickly.

My notes from McNaughton’s class read that any clear acid—lemon juice, white wine vinegar, even white wine—will work to make ricotta. Once I even tried powdered citric acid mixed with a splash of water. Typically, however, I use a mixture of almost 4 tablespoons lemon juice with a splash of champagne vinegar.

The method I use is by no means the only way to make ricotta at home. Other techniques, even though more involved, also work to produce different textures of ricotta.

In Classic Techniques of Italian Cooking (1982), Giuliano Bugialli’s recipe stirs lemon juice into milk, lets the mixture stand for 36 hours in a cool place, then adds yogurt. Bring the contents to a boil for 1 minute. Pour the product into a colander lined with heavy cheesecloth to drain for 1 hour. He writes: “[t]his is the authentically dry unsalted ricotta which is to be used as a binding ingredient. It does not have a rich flavor in itself.”

In The Splendid Table (1992), Lynne Rossetto Kasper presents another method to make a creamier ricotta. Her recipe warms milk, cream and lemon juice to 170°F over medium-low heat. This, she writes, can take 40 minutes. Then turn up the heat to medium to bring the mixture to 205° to 208°F. Turn off the heat, let rest for 10 minutes then turn the mixture into a cheesecloth-lined colander to drain for 15 minutes.

Cardamom Doughnut-ish Tea Cakes

Let’s end 2024 with an easy recipe for a delicious little tea cake. In Everything I Want to Eat (Abrams, 2016), Jessica Koslow, who owns Sqirl in Los Angeles, introduces her restaurant’s recipe for Cardamom Doughnut-ish Tea Cakes like this: “I know there are a lot of challenging recipes in this book. Here’s one that’s not. But don’t be fooled by how straight forward it is. These tea cakes are one of our biggest crowd-pleasers.” I tried this recipe because I wanted an easy donut recipe. The following fits the bill if you are okay a doughnut’s kissing cousin.

For the Tea Cakes

150 g unsalted butter, melted, plus more for the muffin tin

255 g all-purpose flour

135 g sugar

2½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

¾ teaspoon fine sea salt

1 large egg

240 ml whole milk

For the Cinnamon-Sugar Topping

65 g sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground cardamom

Pinch of fine sea salt

Unsalted butter, melted

Make the Tea Cakes

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Butter just the bottom surface (not the sides) of a 12-well muffin tin.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom, and salt.

In another bowl, crack the egg and whisk to break it up. Gradually whisk in the melted butter and milk.

Pour into the flour mixture, stirring just until combined. (If the batter looks lumpy and slightly undermixed, it’s perfect.)

Scoop the batter into each well of the muffin tin, filling them only three-quarters full. Bake until the tops are very light golden and spring back when you press on them, about 25 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes in the tins.

Meanwhile, Make the Cinnamon-Sugar Topping

Stir together the sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt. Once the tea cakes have cooled off a little, turn them out of the tins. Dip the tops into the melted butter, then into the cinnamon sugar. Any bald patches can be brushed with melted butter and dipped into the sugar again.

These are best eaten immediately, but can be stored, covered, overnight.

With a pleasing springy texture and delicious cardamom aroma and flavor, I think these little cakes make the perfect holiday treat. Added bonus: washing-up after baking is as easy as making the cakes.

Best Cookbooks of 2024

One of the best parts of writing A Serious Bunburyist comes yearend when I choose my five favorite cookbooks of the year. I generally gravitate to single subject, professional chef, and restaurant books; this year is no different. In alphabetical order, I share my picks for the five best cookbooks of 2024.

Café Cecilia Cookbook by Max Rocha (Phaidon)

The Four Horsemen: Food + Wine for Good Times by Nick Curtola with Gabe Ulla + James Murphy, Notes on Wine by Justin Chearno (Abrams)

Konbini: Cult Recipes, Stories and Adventures from Japan’s Iconic Convenience Stores by Brendan Liew and Caryn Ng (Smith Street Books)

The Turkey Book: A Chef’s Journal of Hunting and Cooking America’s Bird by Jesse Griffiths (St. John Press)

Very Good Bread: The Science of Dough and the Art of Making Bread at Home by Melissa Weller (Knopf)

Here’s why I selected these titles.

Café Cecilia Cookbook Rocha shares recipes to make simple food (think Richard Olney’s Simple French Food (here) and Fergus Henderson’s fare (here), for whom Rocha worked for at St. John in London).  Café Cecilia’s elegant book design feels both modern and handsomely retro. I baked Rocha’s Guinness Bread using a locally made stout from Original Pattern in Oakland, CA, and the result tasted delicious. The book has a strong pasta section, probably because Rocha worked at The River Café. I plan to make his recipe for Odette’s Pork Pasta over the holidays. Again: a beautiful, handsome cookbook with great photographs by Matthieu Lavanchy.

The Four Horsemen This cookbook drew my interest when I learned that Nick Curtola, the chef at The Four Horsemen restaurant in New York City, worked for Russell Moore and Allison Hopelain at Camino in Oakland, CA. Sadly, Camino closed its doors in 2018, but, fortunately, Russ and Allison first penned an outstanding cookbook in 2015 entitled This is Camino (here). With Curtola’s Camino ties, I wondered what his recipes might offer. I see Camino’s ethos of simplicity in Curtola’s offerings: Grilled Flatbread; Sugar Snap Peas with Calabrian Chile, Mint, and Ricotta Salata; Little Gems with Green Goddess, Radishes, and Fried Croutons. But clearly Curtola’s food for The Four Horsemen is his own. With the restaurant’s wine credentials—it won a James Beard Award for the best wine program in the United State—most of the cookbook’s dishes pair well with wine. If you like cookbooks that tell a story, then enjoy this tale of how a bunch of profoundly naïve folks thought they could open a restaurant in NYC without any real experience to speak of. Well...they did and it’s an unexpected Cinderella story. We are now the happy recipients of its talented chef’s recipes in The Four Horsemen.

Konbini This unique book gets my nod for the most enjoyable cookbook of 2024. One of the surprising highlights of my trip to Japan in 2018 was the pleasure and excitement experienced each time I turned into a Japanese 7-Eleven konbini. The story of how a US-born convenience store traveled overseas to Japan and blossomed comes to life in Brendan Liew and Caryn Ng’s Konbini. I enjoyed reading the history of Japan’s 7-Eleven, Family Mart and Lawson convenience stores. I learned about these konbini’s seasonal offerings and regional variations. Liew and Ng offer a generous helping of elevated recipes that help you to recreate classic konbini food offerings in the comfort of your own kitchen. Some dishes, like onigiri, barely need a recipe, but the book provides useful process photographs that show how to form these delicious Japanese rice balls. I look forward to trying out some of Konbini’s chicken recipes: fried chicken, karaage and roast chicken. Kudos to the book’s designer, Evi-O.Studio, and photographer, Gorta Yuuki. Both contribute mightily to Konbini’s overall success.

The Turkey Book I wrote about this single subject cookbook earlier this year (here). In summary: The Turkey Book is a generous, interesting and well-written book on the art of hunting and cooking turkey. Expect strong recipes from a James Beard winning cookbook author and talented chef.

Very Good Bread Melissa Weller, together with Carolynn Carreño, penned one of my favorite baking books, A Good Bake (2020). This year Weller follows up her modern classic with Very Good Bread. I wish I had this book when I began baking! Clear, concise recipes give the baker all the information necessary to produce outstanding results. I’m particularly looking forward to making Weller’s recipe for M’smen, a laminated flatbread from Morocco. Very Good Bread contains an extensive section on making bagels. Weller is a real pro—she served as the head baker at Thomas Keller’s Per Se restaurant in NYC—and her latest book should more than satisfy both the beginning and experienced baker.

If I do not get around to writing another post by year’s end, wishing you Season’s Greetings and a Healthy, Sane 2025.