Little Miss Muffet

For the last few years I have had an article on making homemade ricotta stuck up on the fridge. It seemed like such a nice idea, but I'd never bothered to actually do anything about it. For unknown reasons, the science fair allure of this project called to me this weekend so this morning I assembled the equipment and ingredients:
1 gallon whole milk
1 pint well shaken buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt (which should be increased a bit, a least for my palette)
Fresh ground pepper

The first step was to pour the milk and buttermilk into a stainless steel pan, I used my 8 quart stock pot which was the perfect size. Then everything needed to be whisked together and put over medium high heat. At this point, my instructions said the milk would boil and cook for 25 minutes until it curdles and "thickened but still light" (whatever that means). It was unclear if that was supposed to be 25 minutes total or 25 minutes post-boiling. So I decided since I already had an apron on and a wooden spoon at the ready I would just hang out in the kitchen drinking tea and peering into the pot periodically. This was a good idea because timing in the recipe was irrelevant to my experience. The milk burbled but never really boiled and was on the stove close to 40 minutes before anything happened. At this point a few curds started to appear, continued cooking and stirring for about 10 more minutes resulted in more and bigger curds.

Curds and Whey

At this point I had to drain off the whey. This was tricky because A) it felt very wasteful since there was a lot of it, if I only had a pig to slop I would have known what to do B) I do not have a large bucket which would have been useful. I improvised with a bowl that had to be shuffled around for draining and strainers\colander lined with cheesecloth. Since I was in the science fair mode, I reserved some whey to use in bread baking. Results pending.

This left me with pretty, fluffy (albeit damp) curds. I went back to the instructions and mixed in salt and pepper and then let the curd drain for about 20 minutes. They still seemed a bit too wet, so I relied on yogurt cheese making experience and went ahead and bundled up the cheese cloth and started squeezing additional liquid out.

Snuggled up Curds

I sampled some at this point and...quite lovely. I detected a subtle nutty flavor that I can't recall ever having in commercial ricottas in the midst of all that creamy pleasantness. At this point they got spooned into oiled custard cups and cooled under cover at room temp for about 45 minutes. In summer methinks they'd be very pretty with a nasturtium blossom tucked on top.

Finished Product