A New Kind of Post - Kitchen Chemistry

I'm not a great cook. I can follow a recipe, but I'm not naturally a cook and I am very self-conscious about cooking for others. But, I saw an episode of Diners, Drive Ins and Dives (or whatever order they're in) last night that had a restaurant owner making his own ricotta for their pizzas. It looked so easy, the chemist in me thought I would try it at home.

The recipe calls for 4 parts regular milk to 1 part buttermilk. I didn't have whole milk, so I added a splash of heavy cream to up the fat. Yum. I used regular cup measurements, 4 cups milk to 1 cup buttermilk.
Anyway, you have to mix the milks in a pan and heat on medium heat, stirring to make sure you don't burn the milk (or the bottom of the pan) until the curds start to separate from the whey. I even took a pic of this, hopefully it shows up well enough.

Curds starting to appear...

I turned the heat down slightly after this and continued warming and stirring occasionally. Whilst you're waiting for this, line a sieve with a few layers of cheesecloth (maybe 4-5) and put a bowl underneath. Then, ladle your curds (the floating solid bits) into the cloth so they can drain.

Curds in sieve

Let the whey drain for a while (5 mins) or so, then gather the corners of the cloth and hold up. This helps the curds drain further. Keeping the bundle together, put back in the sieve and leave for about 15 mins. The curds then really start to come together.

Strained curds

Put it in a little container in the fridge until you're ready to use. It tastes delicious and who knew it was that easy to make yourself? Going to try it out on pizza tonight I think, assuming the breadmaker does it's magic on the dough. That's a first time experiment too. If it looks decent, I might even share a pic of that....

Update - Here it is! Tasted pretty good too, not bad for a first attempt. Ham, mushrooms and ricotta, with sauce and mozzarella.

Finished pizza (pay no attention to shape!)