Hello - you seem like the sort of people to be able to help. I’ll be visiting cousins in California in July and would like to cook them a “European” meal.
What I’d like to know is this - how easy is it to find ingredients such as ricotta or marscapone ?
If it’s not easy what sould you substitute them with ?
The cousins are in Cupertino but we’ll have a car so we’re not limited to shopping there.
THank you.
You are in the middle of the silicon valley. There is no ingredient outside of your grasp. In as much as it disgusts me, there is a Whole Paycheck in Cupertino, not to mention other smaller markets which will carry your desired ingredients. Hell, I’m pretty sure you can find that stuff at Safeway, this being California and all that.
I don’t think ricotta cheese would be that hard to find, but my father has substituted it with cottage cheese when we were in a pinch, and it came out rather okay.
Apologies for any Italian recipe sacrilege I have just committed. 
I’m Italian myself. We only substituted because the stores were closed, I swear.
I can get ricotta and mascarpone in the standard grocery stores here in the middle of nowhere. You’ll have no problems finding them in California.
Yeah, Whole Foods has its flagship store in Cupertino. It’s the size of a Costco and carries every imported cheese known to mankind. You will find everything you could possibly want and more besides. The cheese counter is all the way in the back on the right; you’ll have to negotiate the multitude of prepared food counters, which will be filled with countless fragrant ethnic dishes, so don’t go too hungry.
Here is the Whole Foods cheese selector. Fresh ricotta, marscapone, and mozzarella are almost universally available at any of the standard chains (Ralphs, Vons/Pavillons, et cetera). In addition, you’re up in California’s agricultural country (which actually exceeds Wisconsin’s dairy production), so there are plenty of farmer’s markets, specialty dairies and creameries, et cetera; the San Francisco/Santa Clara area is basically foodie heaven for the West Coast, so if you can’t readily find it, it’s probably banned in most industrial nations due to extreme toxicity.
Leah M, a good cook knows that sometimes you just have to make do with what you have, and that on occasion, serendipitously good results occur.
Stranger
Excellent - that’s what I was hoping to hear - thanks guys, and Leah M I’m the sacrilegious one what with my cheat’s tiramisu (secret ingredient)
After Wisconsin, California produces the most cheese in this country. Finding most types of cheese should be easy enough.
Geez, any large well stocked Californian grocery store will have a huge selection of foods from all over the world. If that doesn’t satisfy you going to a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s will rock your world.
I wish we could do away with this myth about American grocery stores stocking nothing but Wonder Bread, Twinkies and Kraft American cheese slices. 
Easy tiger 
- I’ve never done food shopping in the States before. If I wanted to get American produce in Paris (aside from ketchup, coke or Oreos etc.) I’d have to go to a specialist shop. In the UK at New Year I had to go to 3 supermarkets before I found Marscapone (one didn’t stock it, one had sold out) and they’re a helluva lot closer to Italy !
Oh, I’m fine. It just seems like back in the 60’s & 70’s Europeans got the idea you can’t get “real” food in American grocery stores but that hasn’t been true in ages. I’m not sure when it happened - maybe the early 80’s? But American’s went all gourmet and demanded all sorts of international “wholesome” and “real” everything. If you can’t find it at a regular grocery store there and jillions of international, Asian, Indian etc. grocery stores.
Oh, and Ricotta is as common as cottage cheese, in just about every grocery store I’ve ever been to. As for Mascarpone, I’ve never heard of it, but if a local Safeway or Albertson’s doesn’t have it, a quick google search shows me Whole Foods does.
Cool, didn’t want you to think there was disparagement going on, actually more like envy - Paris is still very parochial in attitudes to food. French is obviously best, Italian comes a distant second, any “ethnic” food tends to be watered down, blandified Asian.
A trip to the US ? We make a point of getting us some decent Chinese, Japanese or Tex-Mex; in the UK we reserve at least one night for an Indian.