The recipes for cheesemaking are simple—and eerily similar. You warm

milk (and maybe add microbial cultures…I get mine from New England), add a coagulator (usually rennet

of some sort from a reliable company), perhaps heat the milk some more; then, after a half hour or

so, cut the solidified curd that has separated from the whey. Eventually, the

drained solids are pressed into rounds (or squares or triangles)—but don’t

forget the whey. A big bonus is that in the summer months, the fatty acid profile of the fresh milk

is beautifully nutritious.

At the right acidity, and the right temperature, you can recapture even

more solids from the whey—but, oh, how this simple procedure defeats

even the best of my cheesemaking students (and sometimes practitioners)

so that sometimes only a pale smear of milk solids results from the heating.

But, if you do heat the whey correctly (hint: almost immediately after draining

off the cheese curds), your reward is handfuls of beautiful, fresh ricotta.