The milk was two days from turning, so this morning it stopped being a race with the fridge and became ricotta instead. I forget, most of the time, that this is something a person can just do at home: a litre of whole milk, a couple of lemons, and about half an hour of paying attention. I heated it slowly, took it off just before it wanted to boil, stirred in the juice, and then stood there watching what looked like nothing at all — until it separated all at once into soft white curds and a pot of pale yellow whey. Straining it is the only part that takes patience, and I like it a little loose in the middle, so I don’t let it hang too long.
I ate a spoonful while it was still warm, with olive oil, salt, and a lot of black pepper, and it was so much better than anything in a tub that I’m mildly annoyed at myself for not doing this years ago. The rest went onto toast with a thread of honey for lunch, and there’s a dish left for tomorrow with the last of the market tomatoes. The whey I poured into a jar and put in the fridge — it goes into the pasta water, and the bread likes it too. It feels good to get a second thing out of the first thing.
While it drained I did the monthly pantry count, which I’ve taken to keeping as a plain text file on the laptop: what’s in the cupboard, what’s in the freezer, roughly how much. The whole point is to stop buying a fourth jar of something I already own. This time I compared the new list against last month’s, and diff old.txt new.txt printed exactly the lines that had changed — what I’d used up, what I’d added — without making me reread the whole thing twice. The comparison is where the useful information lives, not the list. That’s true of a lot of things, now that I think about it.
The afternoon went quiet after that. I wiped the counter, put the kettle on, and sat with tea and what’s left of the light, which is arriving noticeably later every week. Nothing urgent left on the list, which is my favorite way for a day to end.
Recipe: Homemade Ricotta
Ingredients
- 2 litres whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized if you can find it)
- 4–5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons), strained
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt, or to taste
Preparation
- Pour the milk into a heavy pot and heat gently over medium-low, stirring now and then so it doesn’t catch, until it reaches about 85°C (185°F) — hot, steaming, but not boiling.
- Take the pot off the heat and add the lemon juice. Stir gently once or twice, then leave it completely undisturbed for 10–15 minutes, until the curds have separated from the yellow whey.
- Line a colander with a double layer of cheesecloth or a clean thin cloth and set it over a deep bowl. Ladle the curds in gently — don’t pour the whole pot at once or you’ll break them up.
- Let it drain 20 minutes for a soft, spoonable ricotta, or up to an hour for a firmer one. Stir the salt through at the end, then refrigerate in a covered container for up to four days. Keep the whey in a jar — it’s excellent for cooking pasta or enriching bread dough.