Erica De Mane

Recipe below: Ricotta Baked with Fresh Bay Leaves

I’ve been drawn to Sicilian flavors for a very long time. When I first discovered Sicilian cookbooks, just buying them got me motivated. I cooked my way through several, immediately seeing the differences in ingredients and culinary mindset from my Puglian-Campanian family’s food. I noticed less tomato, more sweet and savory touches, more Spanish and Arab aromas.

Pomp and Sustenance, by Mary Taylor Simeti, came out in the late 1980s. I read it more than I cooked from it. It’s dense like a historical novel with a backdrop of ornate pastries. I read it over and over. A few years later Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Sicily and Sardinia appeared. It had on-location photos of sausages, eggplants, sardines, and bucatini, positioned in front of volcanos or the sea, sometimes on pottery that was too bright, as if a little kid had glazed it. Mint decorated savory dishes. The dish that drew me in most was a big round of ricotta lined with bay leaves and then baked. The aroma of bay was already etched into my pleasure brain, engraved there by the bechamel my mother made for her lasagna. Bugialli wrote that the bay flavor in his ricotta was so powerful that it would have to be an acquired taste for some. I wanted to acquire it. I cooked it and fell in love.

I hadn’t thought about that beautiful baked ricotta in many years, but I recently was planning a video on cooking with bay laurel for my YouTube series, and I realized it would be a great thing to include. The aroma of the cheese cooking is deep, the bay giving off hints of allspice, vanilla, and black pepper as the oven heat causes the leaves to permeate the cheese. It brought me back to my years of discovery, when I first learned how alluring Sicilian cooking could be.

Here’s my version of Bugialli’s recipe. I no longer have the book, so I reconstructed the dish from my taste memory and was pleased it came out so well. I hope you’ll give it a try. And please use fresh bay leaves. They are the only way to go.

Ricotta Baked with Fresh Bay Leaves

32 ounces good-quality whole-milk ricotta
3 tablespoons melted butter
About 15 fresh bay leaves
3 large eggs
A handful of Taggiasca olives, pitted and roughly chopped
Salt
Black pepper
A few big scrapings of nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 375. If your ricotta seems watery, drain it for about 20 minutes.

Brush a 7-inch springform mold with melted butter, saving any remaining butter for later.  Cover the bottom of the pan with bay leaves. They needn’t overlap, so you’ll probably need to use about 6 or 7 of them.

In a large bowl, mix together the ricotta, the eggs, and the olives. Season with salt, black pepper, and the nutmeg. Pour the mixture into the pan. Slip the remaining bay leaves in all around the sides of the pan.  Drizzle the top with the remaining butter. Bake, uncovered, for about an hour, until the top is nicely browned and the whole thing is fairly set, aside from a slight jiggle in the center.

Take it from the oven, and let it sit for at least 45 minutes. This will allow the cheese to continue to firm up and pull away from the sides of the pan so it’s easier to unmold. Run a knife along the sides of the pan, and unmold the cheese. I like to serve it on crostini as an antipasto. It’s also great alongside a tomato salad or a bowl of caponata.