Tabasco is in the house and curds and whey

Seriously, I have NEVER seen a bottle of Tabasco sauce this huge!  12 ounces!

This should last me the month of January!

 So I got the ingredients to make ricotta cheese! 

Homemade Ricotta Cheese

• 1 quart whole milk
• 1 cup heavy cream (turns out heavy whipping cream is the same thing!)
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar

Pour the milk and cream in a saucepan.  Add the salt.  Bring to a simmer over medium heat.

When the milk is simmering, turn off the heat and pour in the vinegar.  Leave it alone for 1 minute.  Then start to stir slowly and gently.  The milk will start to separate into curds and whey (the whey is the LIQUID part!).  After 3 minutes, pour the mixture into a strainer that’s lined with cheesecloth.   Put the stainer over a pot that lets the liquid drain.  Let it drain for 15 minutes. 

So the recipe said that this would yield 1 1/2 cups – I probably got 1 cup?  It’s okay though, because Tony doesn’t like ricotta and I used fresh mozzarella in his ravioli!

you can kind of see the curds forming!

After I took it out of the cheesecloth, I put it right in the fridge because it was still pretty hot.

it was really light!

So Tony’s ravioli mix was cooked shrimp, fresh basil, garlic, Italian seasoning, and fresh mozzarella – mixed in a food processor:

My mix was identical, except I added crushed red pepper and LOTS of cracked pepper to mine!

So Hannah’s filling was all cheese – a combo of ricotta, fresh mozzarella, cracked pepper and salt.  I had to label everything to keep it straight!

Here’s how the first wrap looks:

So I didn’t realize the wonton wrappers I got were more rectangular, so this is what they turned out looking like:

I tried, but apparently Hannah didn’t get the concept of crimping her edges – sadly, about 4 of her ravioli didn’t survive the water bath, and we had ricotta cheese floating on the top of the water!

I liked that each one of hers is a different shape!

Hannah’s dish, with no sauce!

Here’s my plate.  Unfortunately, my blood sugar was dropping like a rock, so I only took one picture of mine before I had to dig in!

I love the taste of fresh basil!

So looking forward to my post tomorrow and my first day of the month giveaway!  Stay tuned!

See you tomorrow!