latticino (a dairy by-product). It has none of the assertiveness we associate with firmer cheeses. It can be made from cow, sheep, goat or buffalo milk.
When it’s fresh it’s one of the gentlest things you can eat. That day in Sicily I had it with some salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil, letting it melt in my mouth, feeling its slight graininess, alternating it with slices of tomato.
Lunch didn’t fix everything, but it did restore equilibrium. It’s easy not to ‘get’ ricotta. Even the scholarly Alan Davidson, in The Oxford Companion to Food, remarks that it ‘tastes of nothing’.
When I first cooked with it, I bought the tubs of UHT stuff that you find in supermarkets. Its role seemed to be that of carrier.
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