fresh homemade ricotta
Ricotta money cannot buy (at least where I live)
I made this ricotta with the whey left over from making Gouda according to this recipe (using two gallons of milk). The procedure I follow to make ricotta derives from the recipe for ricotta from whey1 on this page (without any milk added). I always use the traditional basket (now made of plastic) to drain my ricotta, because I respect the tradition. The photo was taken at the beginning of the draining phase. The yield was about 10.5 oz. On this page you can see what the ricotta looks like after I unmold it.
As I wrote recently in a comment to an article on ricotta by David Tanis:
The beauty of ricotta is that it is an ingenious way of extracting every last bit of goodness from fresh milk: first, cheese is made and then the whey is processed to extract proteins and fat that escaped into it. Whey cheeses in Europe are all fascinating in that respect.
1 The word ricotta comes from the Latin recoctus, meaning cooked again. The name describes the process whereby ricotta has been traditionally made in Italy for centuries, by cooking again the whey left over from making cheese. And not every type of whey can be used (i.e., the whey left over from making certain cheeses is not usable for making ricotta). Processing milk at home according to recipes like the one on the page referenced above will give you an acceptable substituton. (See this post for additional information on ricotta.)
This is my submission to week #10 edition of Black and White Wednesday - A Culinary Photography Event created by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook. Savoring the weekly gallery is highly recommended: it's a very special mid-week treat.
The photo was shot in color and then converted to black and white.
This post contains the gallery of photos submitted to the event.
