Live from Sicily! The villages of Etna hosted our curiosities today. We started the morning eating sheep’s milk ricotta warm out of the cauldron along with honey drizzled doughnuts. When we visited the town of Zafferano Etnea, we learned some local mythology and about what it’s like to live on Europe’s most active volcano. This…
Tag: ricotta
Sweet Ricotta Cream, High School Students, and I
It may not be the season exactly for cuccìa, but in lieu of researching and writing a post, I spent the night making the wheatberry ricotta pudding pictured along with cannoli cream for dozens of cannoli, not pictured… All for a lecture/presentation tomorrow about the feasts and foods of Sicily at a high school in…
Let’s Talk Cheese: Part 9
In the Valle del Belice in Trapani Province, Sicily, they produce a DOP (Denominazione d’Origine Protetta or Protected Designation of Origin) certified “pasta filata” (stretched/pulled) cheese called Vastedda della Valle del Belice. The name, vastedda, comes from the local Sicilian language–vasta means “gone bad.” In other words, the cheese is made from pecorino cheese that…
Ricotta is Right
This beautiful plate of “pasta alla Norma” was my dinner back at the beginning of June in Bagheria, Sicily my grandmother’s hometown. It is the classic Sicilian pasta dish, made with maccheroni (in this case rigatoni) with a light tomato sauce, sautéed (or fried) eggplant, grated salted ricotta, and if available, fresh basil. Please take…
Let’s Talk Cheese: Part 8
So, my tips when visiting the caseificio/cheese maker/dairy farm is to arrive early (8:30? You’ll have to ask their schedule.) to watch the process. But most importantly, to taste the tuma and ricotta right off of the draining table, when it’s still warm. Go hungry, and bring with you a few rolls of freshly baked,…
Let’s Talk Cheese: Part 7
Once the curds have formed and have begun to float to the top of the mixture in the cauldron, the cheese maker is on a schedule. Careful to not overcook the curds, he removes them from the heat and then methodically scoops the now ricotta cheese into a different set of plastic baskets that are…
Let’s Talk Cheese: Part 6
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…
Let’s Talk Cheese: Part 1
Like a fine wine, cheese takes on the terroir, or the natural production environment, where it is produced. So, how does one begin to make excellent tasting cheese? It starts with the animal from where the milk that becomes the cheese comes, but first it starts from the grass and grains that the animal eats….
It’s All About The Ricotta
As I prepare to lead this Saturday’s New York City Cannoli Crawl (Sorry folks, this edition is sold out! ), I thought I’d share a photo of one of Sicily’s top three cannoli, in my humble opinion… From Euro Bar in Dattilo. What makes these so good? Many things, but primarily, the very fresh sheep’s…
Baskets for Heaven
Sheep herding and cheese making has been part of life in Sicily for centuries. The baskets pictured were used for making, molding, and aging sheep milk cheeses such as pecorino, primo sale, and ricotta before modern health codes required plastic imitations to be adopted.