Yummy Malaysiana: rich homemade ricotta

A few years ago, I made ricotta for the first time. I suspect a good lot of you just read that the part where I made cheese/played cheesemaker/fiddled with curds and whey in my shoebox kitchen, not because I maybe forgot about a carton of milk for a few weeks in the back of the fridge and conducted an unintentional science project, but just for a good time inched your cursor to the little X of your browser tab and navigated away. Clearly, this wasnt the act of a sane person, though that does seem to be the theme this week. The thing is, a good amount of cheese that we eat mozzarella, goat cheese, paneer, cottage cheese come down to milk plus acid. What you do from there is your art. Except my first ricotta wasnt particularly artful. It was a little dry and coarse. We spread it on pizza with jammy caramelized red onions and ate it happily, but it wasnt the kind of ricotta you dream of. I moved on.

But then I fell in love with ricotta again. I discovered Salvatore Ricotta, made in small batches in Brooklyn, and frustratingly hard to find anywhere else as I want everyone in the world to have a taste just a couple months ! ago and Im sure, years after everyone who pays attention, and sadly, for anyone around me who is not my equally ricotta-besotted husband, have spoken about little else since. [You've got to watch the video, okay?] Ive never had ricotta like it; its nothing like the store bought stuff. This is very strained ricotta, almost whey-free, and it spreads almost like cream cheese but with a richness suggestive of whipped cream or crme frache. Its not easily forgotten.