Ricotta Infornata

I always make Ricotta when I make a hard cheese now, there's not really a lot of point in throwing away perfectly good whey, so I thought I'd have a go at making ricotta infornata. There's various things can be done with ricotta, this seemed like a nice simple one to experiment with.

So firstly I needed to make some ricotta, here's a quick re-cap on that...

I started with my 6 pints of fresh whey

Which I heated to 200degF and added a little cider vinegar

Which causes albumin proteins to coagulate on the surface.

These are ladled into some cheese cloth

And left to drain a while

That's that done. I salted the drained ricotta, placed it into a lined mould and applied some light pressure for 24 hours to shape it into a block.

The block I baked in a covered oven dish for 20 minutes, then flipped it and baked for a further 20 minutes.

Which gave me this final result:

Texture and taste wise it was very much like tofu, obviously a bit nuttier and creamier though. Usually this is served up with figs and honey but I found that a light salad and some sweet onion relish went well with it, which gives me the idea that in fact this would be great for pressing into a patty shape and serving in a bun as a vegie burger??

Still, I recon theres better things you can do with this stuff. The ricotta infornata I made was quite bland and I think a bit more seasoning before moulding it, or like tofu, marinating a bit before cooking might be a good idea next time.