If you joined us at Autumn Harvest you may have been part of Kristen Allan’s cheese-making workshop. Everyone was after her ricotta recipe, and she’s been kind enough to share it with us!

We’ve featured Kristen’s cheese-making and ricotta before, but its well worth a repeat.

Ricotta is incredibly easy to make, and can be eaten fresh, combined into pastas, cakes and and any number of recipes. A favourite for me is simply to serve it soft and slightly warm, drizzled with a really good honey and crispbread – and maybe a braised fig or two! While the later processes vary incredibly in complexity, cheese starts in a very basic whey (yes, a cheese joke!): separating the soft ‘curds’ from the watery ‘whey’. In this case, the method uses lemon juice. Mrs Beeton gives this prosaic explanation of the concept, with a note for a rather horrifying ingredient for colouring –

CHEESE.

Cheese is the curd formed from milk by artificial coagulation, pressed and dried for use. Curd, called also casein and caseous matter, or the basis of cheese, exists in the milk, and not in the cream, and requires only to be separated by coagulation: the coagulation, however, supposes some alteration of the curd. By means of the substance employed to coagulate it, it is rendered insoluble in water. When the curd is freed from the whey, kneaded and pressed to expel it entirely, it becomes cheese; this assumes a degree of transparency, and possesses many of the properties of coagulated albumen. If it be well dried, it does not change by exposure to the air; but if it contain moisture, it soon putrefies; it therefore requires some salt to preserve it, and this acts likewise as a kind of seasoning. All our cheese is coloured more or less, except that made from skim milk. The colouring substances employed are arnatto, turmeric, or marigold, all perfectly harmless unless they are adulterated; and it is said that arnatto sometimes contains red lead.

Mrs. Beeton’s Dictionary of Every-day Cookery. London, 1865 edition.

Get started

While making ricotta is incredibly easy, Kristen has more tips as you become more experienced.  If for example as the mix is almost at its peak temperature and you think the curds really aren’t separating, add a small splash of lemon juice, about a tablespoon.

While a muslin-lined colander is easy, a special ‘ricotta basket’ does the job perfectly. If you’ve bought a full round of ricotta you’ll notice they come in a plastic basket. When turned out, this gives the ricotta top a distinctive textured pattern.