Of all the pandemic-era kitchen projects that sprung up amid early-quarantine ennui, some have proved more enduring than others. I don’t think I ever made a successful dalgona coffee, and I won’t be growing waterlogged “windowsill scallions” in a mason jar again.
But during that spring, I was very lucky to live just a few blocks away from my favorite restaurant in the city, Hart’s, which had temporarily shifted to selling a wonderful array of takeaway goods and provisions: braised greens, Serrano ham, fresh-made aioli, loaves of She Wolf bread. Being able to bring home the compartments of a Hart’s meal kickstarted a wave of tinkering in my kitchen, and something I routinely bought, and then learned to cook, was fresh cheese. This delicacy has stood the test of time; I still make it today, and it is well worth the very minimal trouble.
There are many kinds of fresh cheese, with different names and preparations. You can call this kind farmer’s cheese, owing to its humble roots, but I usually call it ricotta — even though traditional ricotta is technically “recooked” (hence the name) from whey, rather than the fresh milk used here. No matter; what I make most closely resembles ricotta, and it can be used anywhere ricotta is welcome. It is one of those foods that, if you’ve had it fresh, you can never go back to store-bought: tangy, rich, and suffused with a particular dairy-ness that you cannot find in a supermarket.
For anyone with visions of moldering wheels of hard cheese in a French farmhouse cellar, you’ll be pleased to learn that all you need is a quart of milk, some vinegar (I recommend rice or white wine), and a stove. It takes about a half-hour, total, and only requires some diligent stirring; you’ll heat the milk on the stove until it nearly boils, add the vinegar, and watch patiently as the curds separate from the whey and form distinctly ricotta-like clouds. Then you drain it — you don’t even need cheesecloth; I line a sieve with paper towels — until just the curds are left, which are gently whipped with salt into a mound of fresh cheese.
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