Erica De Mane

Recipe below: Baked Ricotta with Deep Summer Herbs

Early summer every year I get a feeling of urgency. I can’t wait to start using all my newly planted herbs in everything, food, drinks, on my face. This year I’m especially worked up, because I have my first raised bed. Before now I always jammed thirty or so big herb pots up onto my deck and watched them grow into a dense mass. A voluptuous jungle, but ultimately suffocating, for the herbs and for me. Some herbs, tarragon for instance, hate being crowded, so they never thrived up there. Same for marjoram, which usually started out promising but soon shriveled into a crusty stump. This year, with my new setup, those are both thriving. I’ve also planted salad burnet, which has a fresh cucumber taste, summer savory, bronze fennel, borage, lovage, five types of basil, Aleppo and Espelette chilies. Can’t wait to see what the deer decide to eat.

My raised bed.

What I like to do early in the season is cook dishes that will taste good with small amounts of herbs. That way I get to enjoy my plants’ unique flavors without completely scalping them. I decided to make this baked ricotta with that in mind, and I went with a few tiny sprigs of some of the sturdier, more deeply flavored herbs, rosemary, savory, thyme, and marjoram. The mix turned out quite beautiful on the tongue. The entire thing took about five minutes to throw together and a half hour to bake. Instant homemade antipasto. All you need with it is good bread and a bottle of Fiano di Avellino.

Happy early summer cooking to you.

Baked Ricotta with Deep Summer Herbs

I used a 2-cup soufflé dish for this, but any equivalent, not too shallow baking dish will work fine.

15 ounces whole-milk ricotta, well drained
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1 large egg
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus a little more for the dish
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
1 heaping tablespoon grated grana Padano cheese
2 sprigs each of rosemary, marjoram, savory, and thyme, the leaves all lightly chopped (or whatever you have that would fit with this theme, such as a little Italian oregano or even some spearmint)
Salt

Preheat the oven to 400. Oil your baking dish.

Mix all the ingredients together in a medium bowl. Make sure they’re well blended.

Pour this all into the baking dish, and bake until just set in the middle and lightly golden around the edges, about 30 to 35 minutes.

Let sit about 10 minutes before serving, just so it can firm up a bit. Serve warm or at room temperature.

I love to serve this with crostini, toasted, rubbed with garlic, and brushed with olive oil. You also might want to present it alongside summer ratatouille or caponata, or a tomato salad. And good olives or gently pickled vegetables would also make a nice counterpoint to the deep creaminess of the ricotta.