Ricotta

Do you buy your ricotta by the cottage cheese?  The stuff that has been sitting on the shelf for a couple of weeks already, and has a shelf life for a month or more longer?  Try this simple recipe.  It is only two ingredients, and it is so easy and delicious.  If you have never had fresh ricotta, you don't know what you are missing.  It has a creamy, delicate flavor, and is so cost effective to make.

Ingredients:

Milk - 1 Gallon

Cider Vinegar - 1/4 Cup

Yup, seriously, that is it!

In a pan large enough to fit 1 gallon + some wiggle room, poor the gallon of milk.  Make sure that you are not using a copper pan.  The milk doesn't react well in copper.  Poor 1/4 cup of vinegar in the milk.  You can use any kind, but I prefer the delicate flavor of the cider vinegar.  Heat the milk to about 180 degrees, stirring until you see little white flecks (curd) forming.  Stop stirring at this point so that you don't break up the curds.  If you do not have a thermometer don't worry, you should heat the milk to just below the boiling point.  You will see the milk separate and all of the curd will float to the top.  Let it rest for 5 minutes or so and then with a slotted spoon, ladle in to a strainer, lined with cheese cloth.  If you do not have cheese cloth you can use a clean dish towel.  Let the ricotta drain in the cheese cloth until it is at the desired consistency.  Depending on what you are going to use the ricotta for will depend on how firm you want it to be.  If you are using your ricotta in a pasta dish, drain for 10 minutes or so.  If you would like it to be a little firmer, say for a cheesecake drain for 40 minutes or so.  Now pat yourself on the back, you just made ricotta!  Season as you wish.  Use within a week.

Refined Sugar Free Jam

When I decided that I wanted to make jam, I knew that I didn’t want to use any sugar or pectin, but I wanted it to be really tasty.  So I found a recipe on one of my favorite blogs and modified it to my taste.  You can certainly use sugar if you would like.  The recipe is pretty basic, and then you can add other flavorings.

Here is a list of some sugar substitutes:

Honey

Agave Nectar

Maple Syrup

Molasses

This is where I purchased my jars.  Most of the jars are able to be used for canning.  I plan on giving these away as gifts, so I wanted to have some nice jars.  The shipping is pretty high, so if you want to make an order it might be a good idea to do a group order with some friends.

http://www.specialtybottle.com/

Basic Recipe:

Fresh Local Strawberries – 3 pounds

Apple – pealed and shredded  (apples contain a lot of natural pectin!)

Lemon – half

Sugar in some form listed above – 2 cups

Combine all ingredients and mash together.  Heat on med-high heat until the mixture is boiling.  Boil until the jam gets to the jelling stage (this took me about an hour), stirring frequently.  You can test the jam by putting a plate in the freezer and spooning a small amount of jam onto the chilled plate.  If you can push it with your finger and it is thick then it is good.  At this point you can take the jam off of the heat and either ladle hot jam into sterilized jars and process in a water bath for 10 minutes, removing from the water and allowing to rest for 12 hours; or you can let the jam cool, ladle in to containers and freeze.  Because of the low sugar content of this jam it will only keep in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks, but I don’t think that will be a problem.  We have never been jam eaters, but since having made homemade jam, we haven’t kept a jar for more than 2 or 3 days.

Modifications:

Strawberry Maple Jam

Follow directions for basic recipe, using maple syrup as the sugar.  During the last couple of minutes of cooking, add 2 teaspoons of cinnamon.  Process as listed above.

Strawberry Vanilla Jam

Follow directs for basic recipe, using agave nectar as the sugar.  While cooking, split a vanilla bean down the middle.  Scrape the insides from the bean and add both the bean and the insides to the jam mixture.  Once you take the jam off of the heat, carefully take the bean pod out of the jam* and add 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract.  Stir and process as listed above.

I purchased my vanilla beans from Amazon.com.  They are really great quality and you can't beat the price.  At the grocery store you will pay about $5 a piece for vanilla beans.  Through Amazon I got about 50 (I think it was actually 52) beans for $24.99.  Lets do that math.  $24.99/50 = .4998, or about $.50 each.  That is 10 times cheaper! 

* Save the spent bean pod for another application.  Just rinse off jam, allow to dry and store in an airtight container.

This recipe has been modified from this blg http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/05/10/how-to-can-some-jam-a-simple-method-without-pectin/