Alright, as I reported last time I blogged about ricotta (do you suppose anybody has ever used that exact phrase before? ah, probably…), there are other ricotta recipes to try, and now I’ve tried another (from Suzanne Dunaway’s No Need to Knead), and it’s the one. Seriously, make this cheese. It’s easy. It’s quick. It’s delicious enough to eat by the spoonful. It will elevate your desserts and lighten your lasagne. I made this to spoon onto peach pizza, but I think we all wound up eating as much of the cheese, plain, as we did the pizza.

Here’s what you need:
1/2 gallon whole milk
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup lemon juice
a saucepan, a strainer, some cheesecloth, and a large bowl

Here’s what you do:
Combine the milk and yogurt in a large saucepan. Bring to a simmer. Turn off the heat, pour in lemon juice, and let sit for an hour. No need to stir in the lemon juice — just pour it in and let it curdle the milk/yogurt mixture. Toward the end of the hour, get out your strainer, line it with cheesecloth, and set that over a bowl. Pour the curdled milk into the strainer and let it sit another hour, at which point it’s ready to serve (or refrigerate), or let it sit longer (you could leave it over night). The recipe suggests gathering up the ends of the cheesecloth and hanging the dripping cheese from your sink faucet, but I don’t think it’s necessary. You can save the milk that drips off the cheese and use it for baking, as I do, or pour it down the drain. If you want to get a little fancy, you could steep a cinnamon stick or some rosemary or something in the milk while it’s heating, but trust me, the ricotta is delicious enough to eat absolutely unadorned.