Leave the gun... take the cannoli (or, Adventures in Cannoli Making, and why maybe it is just easier to get them from the pastry shop)

You may recall that two weekends ago I made homemade ricotta cheese for the express purpose of making cannoli from scratch. It was an ambitious idea, and would have been great if all the recipes I have read weren't such big fat liars.

Let's start first with the fact that ricotta, which most recipes call for in the filling, is alternately too thin, or too Curdy by the time you add everything. I definitely was well intended in my desire to use homemade ricotta, but in reality it is too thin, and the curds uncomfortably large to use in a cream that is supposed to be thick and sweet and smooth. Use the homemade ricotta with herbs or in your pasta.

Luckily, in my planning I purchased a container of store bought ricotta "just in case the ricotta I made doesn't make the grade" because I scrapped the first batch of cream. Once I had added in all of the ingredients to the fresh ricotta, it was dribbling out of the cannoli. Not how it was supposed to turn out, but definitely not the fault of the homemade stuff, which by the way was delicious.

Anyway, even using the store bought ricotta didn't quite hit the mark, so I need to do some further research on the cream part. My instinct tells me that they either have used mascarpone instead of ricotta, or it is a combination of the two.

Aside from that, the only other trouble I had was in getting the dough for the shells to come together. I had to use quite a bit more fortified wine and a little bit of water to get it to the right consistency, but I know that it isn't the recipe as much as it is the horridly arid environment of this state. This is why I am so enamored of weight baking as opposed to metric baking, but alas not every recipe is that way. Thanks Utah!

Well, to make silk out of a sow's ear I dredged the shells in chocolate, which was really the saving grace of the whole thing. I mean they didn't taste half bad, but I hated spending all the effort on something that didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. Next time, right? Here is a picture:

Wipocalypse February 2013

I have really been enjoying working a plain old cross stitch piece - MLI's Firefly Fairies. Though I didn't enjoy all of the misplaced Kreinik that had to be frogged out. No good. BUT! I soldiered on and soon enough I had it all replaced. Anyway, here is my progress pic since last month:

Homemade Ricotta Cheese

...Or as my husband calls it, "chez".

A few days ago my local farmer's market offered a class on making farmer's cheese or homemade ricotta... Whichever you prefer to call it. It happened that my fantastic hubby had planned a bit of a date for the same day as the class, so I was a little bummed about not getting to go. 

As luck would have it, the latest Gourmet Magazine special edition magazine contains a recipe for homemade ricotta... And let me tell you that one doesn't need to spend $20 to take a class to learn how to make it. It is ridiculously easy.

So. Since I planned to make some cannoli tonight, I figured I would go whole hog and make the ricotta from scratch that goes in the cannoli! Yum!

Get yourself 2 quarts of whole milk, and 8oz of heavy cream. Add them to at least a 6 qt pot, and add to that 1/2 tsp of salt. Set the mixture to high heat and stir constantly until it comes to a rolling boil.

Don't forget that when it comes to a rolling boil it bubbles up fast so DON'T PANIC!! Just make sure you are standing by (and you should be since you should have been stirring constantly to make sure your milk doesn't scorch) You may need to remove it from the burner momentarily to keep it from boiling over until your heat reduces. If it does boil over be careful because your proportions will change.

When it does boil up, turn your heat to low/simmer and add 3 tbs of FRESH lemon juice, and let it go for 2 minutes, during which time you will see it curdle. Once it has decently curdled, ladle your curds and whey (whilst I call you Little Miss Muffet...) into a sieve lined with cheesecloth set over a big bowl. The whey will drain out leaving behind everything else. This is what it should look like at this point:

Keep in mind that it will initially drain pretty aggressively so you will want to make sure that your sieve doesn't sit into the whey if you are using a more shallow bowl. Otherwise let it drain for at least an hour, or in my case 113 minutes while you call your mom and chat. :-) 

Once it has drained thoroughly, gather the loose ends of your cheesecloth and squeeze your cheese to remove excess whey. You are done. Here is what mine looked like:

It should yield about 2 cups, or about 1 lb of cheese. There are a multitude of uses for this from putting it into your stuffed pastas or lasagne, or mixing it with fresh herbs to serve with a crusty bread as an appetizer/side dish. Or like me, use it to make cannoli (more about that later).