Ricotta cheese! ... and a quick little supper ;)

Hmmm. I was looking up the other day how to make cheese (mostly cheesecurds for poutine, then mozzarella... will be following up with those shortly) and realized that Ricotta cheese is one of the easiest to make. Well, the typical traditional way to make it is from cheese whey (when making cheese, this is the remaining yellowish coloured liquid from the milk) but you actually need a lot of whey in order to make a cup of ricotta. Ricotta in italian means "re-cooked" and obtained from re-heating the whey that cheese was already made from. Since I have no contacts for local cheesemakers that could provide me with liters and liters of whey, I decided to use the whole milk method! Sure hope the end result turns out good :)

I am having people over for lunch on friday and the theme is Italia! We are going to Italy at the end of March and what better way than to break the ice (some don't know each other) with some good homemade italian cooking. As some of you may already know, my maternal grandfather, Nonno, is italian but born in Montreal. So the italian blood runs through my veins and always makes me crave and return to my roots. I am planning on making a lasagna and will therefore need some ricotta!

Spain has great things but I quickly realized after arriving here that it was lacking in certain food supply areas. BUT they have been catching up and I can find some more baking stuff (I saw fresh yeast the other day at the grocery store!!!) and international products. I always get a high when I walk through the baking and international sections looking for new finds :) Soooo Ricotta calls for Citric Acid. After a bit of research I found that lemon juice is a good substitute! Perfect! So I bought a bag of lemons on my way home from work.

Ricotta Cheese:

Ingredients:

2 liters of fresh milk

1/3 cup of lemon juice

1 tsp of salt

Pour milk in a large pot. Add half of the lemon juice and stir lightly. Add salt.

Slowly warm milk while stirring occasionally (this part does take a while, perfect time for blogging and preparing for supper ;) )

When it reaches 170F, curds will start forming. If they don't, slowly add a bit of lemon juice. Repeat if needed until the curds start forming.

 

Slowly move the curds away from the side of the pot in order for the curds to form together.

Heat until it reaches 190F and remove from heat.

Let rest for 15 mins



 



With a spatula remove curds and place in colander

Drain for about an hour and you got yourself ricotta!!!

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Ok, so as I mentionned, got lots of free time during the milk heating. Since I had bought a bag of lemons, I was thinking of another famous Spanish (or any Med Country) dish. One that every single bar has: Calamares fritos!

So I took some chipirones (smaller version of squid but the ones I get at the market are squid size), thawed them in the microwave and started prepping. The trick to amazing calamares fritos is to use the simplest breading: Flour only. If you do a batter or use breadcrumbs, you overkill the taste of the squid and it just doesn't taste the same. Trust me. Simple is best for this dish.

Calamares Fritos

Ingredients:

4 squids

flour

salt

pepper

oil

My chipirones ready for torture:

After cleaning them, removing the skin and cutting them into rings:

Mix flour with salt and pepper and pass the squid through the mixture. Make sure that each piece is covered inside and out (rings) and shake off excess flour.

In a small pan, heat oil for frying (again, if you have a deep fryer, even better). Another trick here that I learned the hard way, do not overcrowd the oil. If you do so, the temperature lowers and does not fry well. It actually makes a huge lump of squid with soft flour... not fun at all!

Fry for about 1-2 mins depending on desired brownest. Do not over fry as it will have a rubbery texture.

Enjoy!