I found this recipe for Ricotta and tried it and it works very well so go on give it a try



Ricotta and here's how:

Ingredients

4 pints (2.2 litres) whole milk

pinch salt

lemon juice, splash

Boil the milk

Try to keep all of your utensils sterile as this will drastically improve the shelf life of your cheese. The milk should be fresh – this recipe doesn't really work with UHT. The higher the fat content the higher the yield, so you can add cream if you wish to have a creamier cheese, or if you are into your lo-cal then use skimmed milk and the proportion of whey cheese will be higher. Heat up your milk with salt added slowly in a pan on the stove, stirring occasionally – best to do it in a non-stick pan or one with a heavy base, or you will end up with a black crust at the bottom which might affect the flavour, not to mention being a bitch to wash up. Bring it to the boil – boil it for a few minutes.

Prepare your sieve

In order to separate liquid from the solid cheese that forms you need a very fine sieve. I used a large muslin square folded into four, but as I write it occurs to me that having layers is actually a bad idea;
it is better practise to sieve several times through a single layer, in order to catch any granules of ricotta that somehow made it through the cloth in such a way that you can spoon it off easily. You need something with quite a tight weave – so-called 'cheesecloth' is not adequate here as it has a very open weave that will just let everything pass through. I put the sieve in a large colander which sat over a pan to catch the liquid (I might cook with it later).

Curdle the milk

So your milk is boiling away gently. Now is time to add some lemon juice, which encourages curds to form. Add splash by splash – I probably added about two tablespoons – until the mixture curdles. Keep on the boil for a few minutes to make sure all curd and whey cheeses have solidified.

Drain

Take the pan off the heat and pour the contents into your prepared sieve. It may look a bit like.. well, let's not get too vulgar. Your home (and you I'm sorry to say) probably smell quite funky too. It will take several hours to be completely dry. Don't be tempted to squeeze the cloth, because you will force out some of the cheese. You could try gathering up the four corners of the cloth sieve and twisting two opposite corners around one another to form a ball on a string with two loose corners at the top to tie to one another. You can then hang it from something or other. I can't do this because of the darned cat, but it's probably the best way (whey).


Keep it in the fridge and it will last for about a week from my experience, but all the better for being fresher.