Erica De Mane

Recipe:  Homemade Ricotta for Easter

What does Easter actually mean to me, a person beyond the classification of lapsed Catholic and into the bright white area of atheism? Not much. I do experience frequent attacks of pagan soil worship, which I suppose bring me closer to the world of spring rebirth and all its wonderment. Growing up half an hour from Manhattan didn’t really give me the chance to play nature girl. I never milked a cow or watched a goat being born, but the aroma of ricotta with its creamy beauty brings a lovely Easter feeling into my heart.

So many traditional Southern Italian Easter dishes use ricotta as a foundation, and they are some of the glories of the Italian kitchen. Pastiera, the sweet ricotta pie studded with wheat berries and perfumed with orange flower water, is in my opinion a work of genius. My mother’s family made something similar using rice instead of wheat, creating a kind of crustless firm pudding that they cut into squares.  Pizza rustica, the savory version of ricotta cake, stuffed with little chunks of provolone and salami, and ravioloni filled with ricotta and finished with butter and fresh sage are two other dishes that showed up on our Easter table when I was a kid and Easter was still the way in my Italian-American world. Now that all the genuflecting, the patent leather Mary Janes, the floral hats with matching purses, the Rodda Peeps and chocolate eggs are no longer part of my Easter day, what remains is ricotta. But don’t pity me. Ricotta is a powerful presence.

Now, to get to the point, if you’ve never made your own homemade ricotta, it’s time you started. There are few things, culinarily speaking, that are so easy and produce such huge rewards for the cook.  Nothing you can buy is comparable to your own homemade still-warm ricotta, drizzled with olive oil and sea salt, or with honey and a sprinkling of nutmeg, or folded into a bowl of al dente spaghetti, or used to make elegant Easter dishes, like the pastiera that I mentioned earlier.

Even though traditional ricotta is made by recooking whey leftover from cheese making, you can make a wonderful version at home using whole milk. It involves adding an acid, like lemon, to whole milk, and gently heating it until it curdles. You don’t need any fancy equipment; just a big pot and a piece of cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer, and possibly a kitchen thermometer as a security blanket, if it’s your first time.

In my book The Flavors of Southern Italy I give a sort of standard recipe for homemade ricotta, using lemon juice.  Almost everyone I know makes it that way. The result is good, but occasionally it can be a little drier than I like. In the several years since I wrote that recipe, I’ve continued to experiment with making ricotta, and I’ve decided that adding buttermilk instead of lemon as the curdling agent gives a moister result. I’ve even gone ahead and added a little heavy cream, so the ricotta is extra rich and soft.

Bruschetta topped with homemade ricotta, roasted peppers, olives and capers—something to think about.

Homemade Ricotta for Easter

(Makes about 4 cups)

1 gallon whole milk
1 pint heavy cream (optional but recommended)
1 quart buttermilk
1 teaspoon salt

Put all the ingredients in a large, nonreactive pot (stainless steel or enamel both work well), and place it on a medium flame. Let it heat, uncovered, stirring once or twice, until little bubbles form on the surface. This will take about 10 minutes or so. Then let it bubble, without stirring, for about 5 minutes. You will see curds start to form and will notice the liquidy whey just start to separate from the solids. The temperature should get up to 170 degrees (a kitchen thermometer is helpful the first few times you make it, until you get the feel of it). Turn off the heat, and let the pot sit there, undisturbed, for 10 minutes (don’t be tempted to stir; it’ll break up the curds while they’re forming). You’ll now notice the faintly greenish whey separating more cleanly from the white curds. Gently pour the mix into a strainer lined with cheesecloth (or into a fine mesh strainer), scraping the bottom of the pan to loosen any stuck-on ricotta. Let drain until all the whey runs off but the cheese is still moist.

I love eating it still warm, but the ricotta will keep in the refrigerator for several days.