Whipped Ricotta with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

 

It's been ages since I blogged, but I'm back at it!

I always seem to have leftover ricotta! You buy a container for lasagna, or something, then the rest seems to go to waste. I hate that!  Now with this recipe, I just might be buying ricotta to make this all the time!  I made this when we had friends over for the weekend at our place in the mountains.  We sipped wine and noshed on this while enjoying the warm air and the view of the trees. A very good weekend.

A note about the cherry tomatoes, I used the small heirloom variety which is why you can see lots of colors in the tomatoes. Any kind of small tomatoes would work out well.

Ingredients

1 cup ricotta

1/2 cup feta cheese

2 cups cherry tomatoes

3-4 garlic cloves, sliced

1/2 onion, sliced in strips

Fresh Thyme

2 Tbsp Olive oil, with more for drizzling for serving

Salt and Pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. On a large baking sheets with sides, add the tomatoes, fresh thyme, garlic, sliced onions and olive oil. Stir to combine. Place in hot oven and roast until the tomatoes start to burst and the onions are limp, about 20 minutes.  You might want to give them a stir halfway through. Let cool to room temperature.

In a good processor, add the ricotta and the feta and process until it is smooth and fluffy.  Taste for salt, as feta can be kind of salty on its own, you may not need much.

Add the ricotta mixture to a small serving dish, spreading it about 1 inch thick, top with the tomato mixtures and more fresh thyme.  Serve with crackers, bread, sliced Persian cucumbers or whatever else you like.

Paper Airplane Cocktail

 

Just about the easiest cocktail ever.  Equal parts of 4 things...

OK, so you do have to buy a couple special ingredients, namely the Aperol and the Amaro. There are dozens of types of Amaro, and technically Aperol is also an Amaro.  Amaro is an Italian bitter-sweet herbal mixture, sometimes sipped on its own, but I like to add it to other cocktails! Be sure to Google Amaro and read up on the many varieties available. 

I'd bought my Aperol when I came through Duty Free a couple years ago, and frankly I hadn't used it that much and it was staring at me in all it's orange glory.  Now I'm sure you're saying "why not an Aperol Spritz?".  Well folks, I am one those people who really do not like my wine mixed with Aperol and topped with soda water. Refreshing?  Yes! Still, it is not my favorite, give me a nice sauvignon blanc or a rose on a hot summer's day and I will be much happier,

My love of this cocktail and Amaro comes from a local Italian place called Amaro Bistro!  At our first happy hour there, I had the good foresight to order "the paper airplane".  This cocktail feels like a classic that's been around for a long time, but apparently invented by a NYC bartender in 2007.

P.S. I am sure you can see that we started this cocktail well before it was 5pm.... like they say, it was 5pm somewhere! It was the perfect Sunday afternoon Covid cocktail!

This recipe makes two small cocktails:

1 jigger amaro di Nonna (dark amaro)

1 jigger Aperol amaro

1 jigger of bourbon or rye

1 jigger of lemon juice

**Now a jigger is about 1.5 oz measure (like in the picture below), where I filled it up 4 times, once with each ingredient above. I added it to a ice filled martini shaker and shake, shake, shake, I added it to our cute little glasses.

*You can use any measuring device... a 1/4 cup measure would work well too and produce two slightly larger martinis (win, win!)

I chose to garnish with a sprig of fresh thyme (but rosemary would work too) and a little curl of lemon zest. Honestly? It doesn't even need a garnish...