Ricotta Gnudi

With all the amazing suggestions our commentators made of what to do with my homemade ricotta, I see quite a bit of cheese making in my future. However I decided to try my hand at making gnudi. Gnudi is Italian for nude and basically what you're making is ravoli filling without the ravoli pasta envelope. Again I used a recipe from the cookbook Stir which calls for the pasta to be edged either with a fork or a gnocci board.

Making these were kinda fun but my research is divided on whether to go with the little ridges or just gnudi balls. Then there's a whole nother version of gnudi a la the Spotted Pig in NY of gnudi balls that are a bit larger and creamy in the middle. You know what that means....more homemade CHEESE.

Labor Day Cheese

It seems that I misconstrued what Labor Day means...apparently I've cleared out the kitchen cob webs all in one day and it all starts with the cheese.
I've got this new cookbook, Stir by Barbara Lynch, that has a recipe for Easy Homemade Ricotta that I've been waiting to try. Only three ingredients, whole milk, vinegar and salt. Time to get cooking. The basic method is to heat the milk and acid to a high enough heat that the the milk will separate into curds and whey. Except my first attempt didn't really produce the kind of curds that seemed like they would produce a nice creamy ricotta cheese. Luckily I had stocked up on half gallons of milk so I decided to try again. However a little a little internet research was needed first. Turns out white vinegar wasn't not the most popular acid used when making homemade ricotta, lemon juice seemed to be the fav. The second thing I learned was that, unlike the recipe in the cookbook, most recipes call for adding the acid once the milk has reached 175 to 180 degrees. Armed with this new information, I hit the stove again. This was more like it.

Here's my bag 'o cheese, draining out the excess whey.

Beautiful creamy ricotta.

Now that I've got all this cheese, what should I do with it?