If you’ll recall from Part 4 of this series, when the cheese maker pressed the curds in the baskets, from them whey drained into a bucket below the stainless steal, angled tub. Let’s talk about what happens with that liquid, which is sheep’s milk that has been heated and treated with a cocktail of good bacteria and rennet (caglio). The cheese maker takes the whey (serio di latte) and puts it back into the cauldron and reheats it (and adds some salt).

This reheating or re-cooking–in Italian: Ri-cotta (cooked again) … leads to ricotta! Here’s Baldo at Azienda Cucchiara cooking the whey and breaking up the next round of curds that are beginning to form.

Oh, yes, this is going to be good.