Create a fantastic dish with handful of ingredients
When food dates back to as early as the Bronze Age, you know it must be something special.
Having apprenticed in Italy, I have come to learn that their respective cuisine has an unwritten rule: don’t waste anything. This is especially true when it comes to dairy processing. With limited grazing areas for mammals, it becomes imperative for as much product is yielded for dairy production.
Enter ricotta cheese. So, let’s get our facts straight: ricotta technically isn’t cheese. Rather, it is a creamy curd that has been cooked twice. It’s this double cooking process that gives ricotta its name; “ri” = (re), and “cotta” = (cooked).
Excess whey, leftover from the cheese-making process, is skimmed off and then recooked, at which point the albumin in the whey solidifies and becomes ricotta.
Ricotta has a creamy and fresh ambiguous personality that adapts to sweet and savoury dishes with delightful results. The ricotta toast recipe I am sharing with you is lean on the ingredient list, which means the quality of each of the ingredients used will have a significant impact on the final eating quality of the dish.
I opted for red pears for pan roasting because I find them to be visually appealing and wonderfully juicy than many of the green-skinned pears, such as Bosc.
I have also opted for Hawaiian black lava salt as a finishing garnish, but fear not if this is not an ingredient you can get your hands on. Feel free to use another type of salt, but the preference here is not to use table salt; sea salt or
kosher salt is far superior.
HONEY-BUTTER ROASTED PEAR AND RICOTTA TOASTS
Created by Chef Ilona Daniel Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
8 half-inch thick slices of a country-style bread, buttered on both sides
1 container ricotta cheese 4 tbsp butter
4 red pears, washed cored, and cut into 10-12 wedges 2 tbsp pink peppercorn 1 bulb roasted garlic or half a bulb of garlic, peeled and sliced thickly
6 sprigs fresh thyme, stripped off of the stalk
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp parsley, coarsely chopped
Black lava salt or fine sea salt to garnish
DIRECTIONS
In a non-stick pan over medium-high heat, toast the bread on both sides and set aside on a serving platter. In the same frying pan, melt the
butter over medium-high heat. If you are using raw garlic, add them in now.
Arrange the pears in the pan; drizzle with honey, thyme, and pink peppercorn, and turn the heat up to high. Allow them to caramelize for 2 minutes; then, using a spatula, turn the pears over. If using the roasted garlic cloves, add them to the pan now. After another minute, flip the pears over, turn off the heat and scatter the parsley over all of the pears.
To assemble: spoon the
ricotta generously over each slice of toast and arrange the pear mixture on top of the ricotta topped toasts. Finish the toasts with a sprinkle of lava salt.
GO ONLINE
Visit SaltWire.com for a video of Chef Ilona Daniel preparing this dish.