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.
