Cutting the cheese

No, not farting you dirty minded people. Actually we made cheese this week, we made mozzarella and ricotta. Both were very easy to make and throughout the day we tried all sorts of Italian cheeses. The mozzarella balls we marinated in olive oil and herbs for a couple of days in the fridge and finally brought them out today and they were delicious. The ricotta we made into a dessert cheese. First of all to make ricotta all you do is take some whole milk and boil it with citric acid and some salt until the whey seperates from the curd. Strain it through cheese cloth and let it hang to let the moisture drip out. Then mix the curd with heavy cream. We then added honey and cinnamon, mixed it up, plated it and drizzled with honey and dusted with a little cinnamon to top it off. Yes, it was excellent and if it had been a cooking challenge we would have won.

The last two days we have been doing antipasti, vegetable yesterday and seafood antipasti today. Both were very good, however i prefer the seafood antipasti we made today. We made Tartara di tonno (tuna tartar), Sopressata di polpo (octopus terrine), and Crudi di pesce (basically raw fish garnished however you like). We also shuked some oysters and clams and dressed those up a bit as well and served them. Are octopus is marinating over night so i will let you know how that tastes after tomorrow. The rest of the dishes were very good, if you like raw fish, my favorite was the Crudi di pesce. I took some mackeral and sliced it thin, a grapefruit supreme, and some parsley and rosemary for decoration and drizzeled some lemon infused olive oil over top and a dash of sea salt. Excellent! (see pic at top)

Last night my mom was in town for business and so we went out to eat. We went to Salumaria Rossi which is owned by the Dean of my program Cesere Casella. It is a small place on the upper west side and is half restaurant, half deli selling fine italian salami's, chesses, and breads. It is an excellent little place and i highly recommend it to anyone making a trip to nyc. Also i am going to try and intern there over the next month to get some real experience in the kitchen!

As always if anyone wants recipes just let me know or if you have any questions please ask. Til next time...

Ciao