Making ricotta. Also, the best shirt of my life.

Ricotta is so much easier to make than you might imagine. I had a few cooking classes last week, and ricotta was something I learned about at my first Gourmet Gannet class.

Allie is a wonderful chef and teacher, so I followed the instructions from class (see her recipe for details).

From a litre of farmhouse milk, you will get around 150g of ricotta - preservative free, and you can control the process. You will need to use milk that is NOT homogenised, e.g. it still has a little cream in it. The stuff I used was around 8% fat, which is only twice as much as regular milk.

moo juice

Basically you boil it briefly:

yep, looks like milk

Turn off the heat. Add a small amount of white vinegar to curdle it:

mmm. delicious.

Leave it to keep curdling for about 10 minutes. Then line a colander with a clean, lint-free tea towel, and pour in the 'cheese'. Cover it and leave it for a few hours, squeezing out the extra whey from time to time...

And you have homemade ricotta! How flash is that?

On a totally unrelated note, I got a parcel today. It contains the only shirt that has ever fit me since the age of 13. Booby girls, I highly recommend checking out the clothing line at www.bravissimo.com - you might even find something on sale.

shirt! no rude gaping or baggy tummy!