A Spring Meal

When we were in the Tessin last weekend I had the idea of making ricotta cheese from a mixture of cow and sheep milk. Continuing that idea led me to the idea of mixing in some Bärlauch and using the result to fill cannelloni. Yesterday I gave that a try.

For the ricotta I used a liter of fresh cow milk and half a liter of sheep milk. I followed the method that I've used before a couple of times (using the double boiler). The resulting cheese is really good. It has a different character from all-cow ricotta that I think it great.

To make the filling I mixed some ricotta with chopped sauteed Bärlauch, lemon juice, and black pepper. I filled cannelloni wrappers that I made using the pasta recipe in FStoS, substituting semolina flour (Knöpflimehl) for the normal flour, topped with grated Parmesan and olive oil, then baked until crispy around the edges. The results were quite tasty, but next time I will add sauteed onions and a bit more lemon to the filling.

We also found some nice looking green asparagus (Italian) at the market and I couldn't resist that. Sauteing this asparagus was pretty much mandatory, so I did asparagus sauteed with crispy ginger. This asparagus wasn't as good as the stuff from the farmers market in CA, but it was still mighty good. Unfortunately it stoked my asparagus craving instead of slaking it... ah well.

Since we have a giant bag of carrots in the fridge (from the Biokisten), I made a batch of Moroccan carrot salad using the recipe in CPV. This is going to become a standard way of making carrots in our house; it's fantastic.

We ended up with plates full of color and goodness:

Wine: Pride Mountain 2005 Viognier