https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/,https://sites.google.com/site/godintheuniverse/,
https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/, www.catholic.org/,www.catholic.org.au/, www.catholic.org/bible/, www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html,
http://diybrickwork.com, http://manneedsgod.co.uk, http://frankmenchise.com
This blog can also be found at this link, Making ricotta my grandma way
Ricotta is a second cheese that can be extracted from the whey, after extracting the cheese.
Welcome to my blog article,
Dear readers, in
our previous article of my life story, we talked how we made cheese in the farms of southern
Italy when I was young, in this article, we will talk how we made ricotta
cheese. The name ricotta is an Italian name because it means that you are
cooking it a second time, and that is exactly what happens when we make
ricotta, we are cooking the whey from the batch of milk that we have extracted
the cheese, a second time; we use a different procedure, when we cook the whey a second time,
to extract whatever is left that can be extracted from that whey.
Here some people
can say, why you are telling us how ricotta is made. Well, we want to compare
the old ways of life with today ways of life. Therefore, this is still a story where
we can learn something from it, since there are people that don’t know anything
about how to make cheese or ricotta cheese and where they come from, so, let me
tell you how ricotta was made, the way that my grandma taught me when I was
young.
So, I am going to tell you, how we used the whey that was left over when we made cheese to make ricotta cheese. I am telling you the way that my grandma taught me a very long time ago; we want to do that to compare the ways of life of today with the ways of life when I was young, which I believe life was a lot harder then. So, I am going to tell you how we made ricotta cheese my grandma way.
Here are links on
the web that explain about ricotta cheese
What is ricotta cheese? « Baking Bites
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This is a dish of fresh drained ricotta cheese, for those that do not know what ricotta is, ricotta is a second cheese that can be made from the milk whey after making cheese. At list that is the ricotta as I know it. Today the name ricotta may be used to make a different type of ricotta. I am saying this because, when I watch cooking shows like Master Chef, they make ricotta straight from milk and that is not the way I made ricotta.
Ricotta making the old ways
To make ricotta
cheese the old way, let us go back to when I made cheese in Compare cheese making, at the end of
which I have collected the whey and placed it in the large kettle and I was
ready to make ricotta, so, let us start making ricotta cheese my grandma way.
First we had to
rekindle the fire, and make sure that we had enough fire wood for the whole
procedure, then lift the large kettle and whey on this three legged devise on
the fire, and start warming the whey slowly and steadily, as the whey warms up,
you need to turn this wooden devise around and around in a slow motion always
in the same direction, this wooden devise is a simple stick with a larger
rounded end, it has been made from elm-wood or some very high grade wood, it has
been purposely made to last a long time, perhaps for generations; anyhow, you
need to turn this wooden devise around in the same direction, with the larger rounded
end dragging softly on the bottom of the kettle, so that any ricotta that is
forming while the whey warms up does not stick to the bottom of the kettle.
While the whey
warms up and you keep turning this wooded devise, this procedure will reach a
stage, when you can see that some very fine flakes of ricotta are forming in
the whey, this is the stage when you need to set the ricotta to rise at the top
of the whey, this can be achieved by adding about half a litre of goat milk to
the whey, while you continue to turn your wooden devise as described before,
this action of adding this goat milk should set a reaction to the forming
ricotta in the whey and it will rise to the top.
This is how it was done, and if you follow this method and you add just goats’ milk you end up
with a beautiful soft and very tasty ricotta cheese, but if you want more
ricotta cheese than usual, then you have to add to the whey some acid stuff
that you have made yourself, (usually this is some old acid whey that we kept
in a bottle from the previous ricotta making) anyhow, in the country where they
make ricotta you can buy this acid stuff from the chemist, with this stuff from
the chemist you can make at least twice as much ricotta, but the quality will
not be as good as when you use plain goat milk.
Anyhow, let us go
back to make this ricotta cheese; and here you need to continue to turn the wooden devise around even more
slowly for a few more minutes; you have to take it slower because you don’t
want to mix the rising ricotta to the whey again, and when you see that all
this ricotta has come to the top of the whey, you can slowly take out the
wooden devise from the kettle, then lift down the hot kettle and you are ready
to collect your ricotta, which is now at the top of the whey for you to
collect.
Collecting your own ricotta
The new hot ricotta was collected in small woven baskets that would let the rest of the whey out while the ricotta was cooling down, we collected it with a colander with handle from the top of the whey, this is how we made ricotta then.
Now remember that this is the story of my life, so I am telling you other things as well; anyhow, at the end of all this ricotta making work, sometimes we left a bit
of ricotta for ourselves, and we used it in the following manner: you see, in
the farms of those days you had to think for yourself, what you were going to
eat next time, so, this was another way to make a warm meal quickly.
Usually in the farms of those days, there was plenty of dry old bread
that was hard to eat the way it was, so, we would slice the bread and put it in
a large dish, and then we would put the still hot ricotta and a bit of whey on
top of this dish filled with old bread; this rustic prepared dish usually would
replace a whole meal during the day. Okay, you might be shocked and spew that
this was a prepared dish of wholesome food, but hey it was either that or just
old dry bread, I hope you see what I mean, and I am pretty sure that if you
were in the same position, you would prefer this warm dish to just dry old
bread; believe it or not that is how hard life was in those old times; so, we
all should be thankful to the progress that we have achieved since then.
Anyhow, at this
point of time the whey in the kettle is still hot, it has got to be because to
make ricotta, we had to warm the whey to a very high temperature just below
boiling point, so, I have one last use for this hot whey before I finish with
it; I have to dip the fresh cheese that I have made in our last article into it,
for say half a minute or so, and this is a sort of pasteurization for the new
cheese.
I know that this
procedure about cheese and ricotta cheese making is boring; but I still have to
explain something else, in those days even the whey had to be put to good use,
it has always been so in farming, the main rule in farming is; waste not want
not, so, what we did with the whey was this, we can give small drinks of it to
cats and dogs, it had to be small drinks otherwise it would make them sick. The
rest of the whey was good for the pigs to drink and to mix with coarse milled
grains to feed them. Yes, you guessed it right once again the farmers don’t
like to waste anything at all, and the pigs are the saving bank of all farm
foods that would otherwise go to waste.
Now that I have
described to you this cheese making and ricotta cheese making, I think that I
have said enough about my farm life, now let me see what else is there to tell
you: Yes I can tell you about wine making the old ways, the heritage chapter
and the Madonna story and others things, we are going to do this before we
leave the town that I was born and lived my young life. After that we are going
to talk about my life experiences as a migrant in this land of opportunities
Australia. See you soon, in our article; Wine making the old ways.
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