Frozen and restaurants probably add more salt than you are using.
Try mixing a pound of ricotta with an egg, 1/2 teaspoon salt and some parsley. I add just a little pinch of freshly ground nutmeg, too. I don’t put parmesan in the ricotta mixture but do put some in with rest of the cheese.
I would encourage the use of sweet or hot Italian sausage, the strong sage-y flavor of most breakfast sausages would be…off-putting in a lasagna
Here’s my favorite lasagna recipe, and a good run-down on Bolognese style lasagna, which is what most of the world outside of the US thinks of lasagna, in my experience.
I didn’t much like lasagna until I discovered this version of it.
I’ve been serving my Aussie-normal bechamel-laden lasagne to Americans here in CA for around 5 years now. No-one’s complaining that there’s no ricotta (ew) in it! I often do two, one of which a vegetarian version with a meatless ragout, full of grilled eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms… mmm…
I love the idea of a layer of pesto. Maybe I’ll try that next time.
Pulykamell, I agree - lasagne Bolognese is my favorite version too.
I came in here because I thought this was going to be about making ricotta from scratch at home and got all excited because I only recently made a homemade soft cheese for saag paneer and was looking forward to some recipes.
Mmmm, bathtub cheese.
I’ve been using chevre instead of ricotta lately in my lasagna, and it’s been a big hit at chez moi. I just mix a log of room temp chevre, plain or garlic and herb, with an egg. Zingy.
I won’t wade into the ricotta vs. besciamella debate. I grew up with Ricotta and so when I make lasagna at home that’s how I make it. I make, it should be noted, really good lasagna. You’ll have to trust me on that.
As for the ricotta, to make it tasty here is what I do. First I use whole milk ricotta not partial skim, it makes a difference. Second, I don’t salt it, it’s never done me any good, I do add some fresh chopped parsley and either basil or oregano to the mix and beat in an egg until the mixture is good and fluffy. Then I add a grind of black pepper and a dash of nutmeg. Like with all things nutmeg, go easy on the stuff, but if you do it right it rounds out the flavors.
I use other cheeses too, but they are separate from the ricotta, not mixed in. I layer mine (from the bottom up) sauce, noodle, ricotta, sauce, mozzarella/parmesan mixture second noodle, ricotta, sauce, cheese mix, fresh chopped herbs (sometimes I go for a third layer). For me this get’s you a nice cheesey center, with the ricotta and the melty cheeses playing different roles both texturally and flavor wise.
The herbs and nutmeg are key to the whole thing working out though (and a dash of cinnamon in the sauce, less than 1/8 tsp for a whole large pot.)
Sorry , I wasn’t clear. My point is that Americans ( and Italian Americans ) are likely to only know the ricotta version as that is what is commonly served in those restaurants that do serve lasagne ( pizzerias or one step above)
A Bechamel and a Meat sauce? Now you’re just making stuff up to see how many pans you can trick someone into using for a single dish.
My cite is Grandma Bodoni. Seriously. She used ricotta and tomato based sauce. I’m not sure what sort of sausage, if any, that she used. However, my mother pretty much HAD to use breakfast sausage, or else no sausage at all, because Italian sausage was almost never available in that time and place.
Chicken fried steak is also called country fried steak. It’s steak that’s fried sort of like chicken is fried, that is, it’s coated with seasoned flour and then either pan fried or deep fried. In fact, I’m making it tonight, in another hour or so. I took half a pound of cubed steak, dredged it in seasoned flour, pounded it until it begged for mercy (yeah, it was cubed, but not thin or tender enough), and now it’s in the fridge, awaiting its fate. This is my general recipe: http://lynnbodoni.livejournal.com/1230.html except that these days, I use about quarter of a pound of steak each for my husband and me, rather than half a pound. We just don’t eat as much as we used to.
Most CFS will have quite a bit of black pepper in both the flour and in the gravy, preferably freshly ground. I don’t use it because I have Issues with it. Traditionally, though, it’s made with lots of black pepper. If you’re going to try to make it at home, you should know this.
As for homemade ricotta, I have this recipe on file, but I’ve never tried it, I almost never buy buttermilk:
Heat 9 cups of milk, 1 cup of buttermilk and 1 tsp salt in a heavy saucepan until bubbles start showing around the edges. Remove from heat and stir in 2-1/2 Tbsp vinegar. Let it sit until curds form, then ladle them gently into a strainer lined with cheesecloth. Let it drain (discard the whey remaining in the pan) and refrigerate.
Unless I am really mis-understanding, That isn’t ricotta, that is the opposite of ricotta, that’s just Farmers cheese. Ricotta is what you make out of the whey after all the cheese(casein) has been removed.
That’s correct. Ricotta is made with whey, usually from the leftovers of making another cheese I mean, just look at the name itself. It literally means “recooked” because it is made by recooking this leftover whey into another cheese. While the yield is going to be quite low as compared with the primary cheese, it’s an economical way of getting every little bit of cheese and cheese-like products out of your milk. And ricotta, being made from whey, tastes different than fresh cheese. It has a
Some people call the fresh cheese made in Lynn’s method “ricotta,” but it’s not true ricotta. It is just one of a number of fresh curd cheeses (see also paneer, queso fresco, cottage cheese, etc.)
Now, there are a bunch of fresh cheeses made with whey, whey-and-milk, or even just milk, that get labelled as “ricotta.” American ricotta tends to be a blend of whey and milk, in my experience. But true ricotta is just whey.
That’s great, but that’s only one kind of lasagna, and not even necessarily the most emblematic kind, except for in the US.
Also, if you go to Google Image Search Italy, you will see most of the images are of the bechamel type of lasagna.
Like I said, I’ve never made this cheese. In fact, I’ve never made any sort of cheese. It’s just a recipe that I saved, thinking that I might get around to making it one day.
And don’t blaspheme against Grandma Bodoni. She might reach out from beyond the grave and make you Sorry.
I grew up with the cottage cheese + egg + Parmesan (you know the stuff in the green can from Kraft) because that’s what Mom made and that is what a non-Italian woman living in Northern Ontario knew and the groceries she could get.
I made that dish a few times, always got good reviews, but then living in Montreal, I had real lasagne with ricotta and a good Bolognese sauce.
Lets just paraphrase Maya Angelou and say “I did then what I knew how to do, And when I knew better, I did better.”
I don’t make lasagne much any more. In terms of time vs effort vs cost, I don’t find it to be worth it. I can eat out and have a much better lasagne and you know, not spend half a day fighting with noodles and sauces and stuff, then have my husband and son gorge on a pan in 10 minutes. Honestly, they wolf it down so fast if it is from M&M or hand made it gets the same reviews.
But now I want to make some… maybe Saturday!
This is a recipe for real ricotta cheese using whey. It will end up being creamier and more finely grained than what you’re used to seeing labeled as “ricotta,” and with a distinct, whey sweetness to it.
ETA: And here is a pure whey version. I’ve only made ricotta a couple of times, and both times it was using the whey-only recipe. You need quite a bit of whey to make a small portion of ricotta. I think the leftover whey from a gallon of whole milk that was used to make cheese yielded maybe a half cup of ricotta.
This was a major, major problem when I was growing up in North Texas. My mother left her phone number with several stores, with instructions to call her if they got ricotta in, because most stores didn’t carry ricotta on a regular basis.
Here is my go-to lasagna recipe. It includes ricotta, and calls for adding egg and parmesan to the ricotta. I bet that would make a good difference.
One thing I’d like to add…
When looking for ricotta, look for brands with no emulsifiers. No xanthan or guar gum. No preservatives either. I don’t have any right now, but I believe the ricotta I buy lists just milk, vinegar, and salt as its ingredients. That means no Polly-O.
I’ve made lasagna with ricotta and bechamel. I prefer the ricotta, which is how my own off-the-boat Sicilian grandmother would make it (living in NYC, we always have access to Italian ingredients). I’ve even tried cottage cheese in baked ziti once…just once. 'Nuff said.
Thanks a bunch - I always respect your opinions on food. I’ll give it a shot over a few beers this weekend.