When I met local shepherd and cheese maker Vincenzo for the second time, his faded jeans were tucked into knee high brown gumboots and he was ladling fresh ewe’s milk, set with rennet, into a large tin lined copper cauldron, fixed into a tiled bench and fed by an open wood fire. The ewe’s milk, fresh from the previous evening’s milking, was creamy.

It was nearly 10 am on a clear spring morning and I had made my way up to the old farm of Vincenzo’s parents along a dirt road, the Villa Chiaretta road, just minutes outside of Polizzi, with Guiseppe and Maria (the property managers of The Sicilian House's Palazzo Notar Nicchi) and my husband to see ricotta (and tuma) being made. We were in the countryside surrounded by the Madonie Mountains.

I crossed an overgrown courtyard in front of the disused farmhouse and ducked down a little to enter the room where Vincenzo makes tuma and ricotta. It was a simple and washed room with: stainless milk urns, long handled ladles and salted cheeses, ricotta and tuma, drying on the deep window sill and a wooden table tucked in the corner.

We put some bread, picked up from a bakery in town, on the wooden table along with some Sicilian red wine and a dozen pork and fennel sausages from Francesco’ s butchery in Polizzi.

Vincenzo greeted us and continued ladling the full cream ewe’s milk into the cauldron.

He makes Tuma first, a creamy firm, quite bland cheese which Vincenzo tells us is perfect on bread with a bit of oregano, oil and salt. And, he continues, it is also great with honey. He sells it in town to the restaurants and pastry shops. It is perfect for both sweet and savoury cooking and Polizzi’s revered Lo Sfoglio cake, made from a 16^th century recipe, has tuma as the main ingredient.

The tuma is placed in plastic sieved containers to drain. And, the milky whey from the draining tuma is funnelled into a bucket and it is this that is put back into the cauldron with more milk, a bit of salt and recooked - 'which is what ri- cotta means' (Vincent Schiavelli)

Vincenzo stirs the heating whey and milk with a large wooden spoon and as it reaches near boiling he scoops the froth from the top and discards this.

Within minutes, the ricotta just rose to the top and Vincenzo scooped it quickly and placed it into small plastic containers to drain. (The lovely woven cane baskets that sit on the floor are no longer used).

He scooped more ricotta and placed it into large tin bowls, tossed in pieces of cut crusty bread and we ate fresh, warm ricotta; it is said to have been made the same way in these Sicilian Mountains for the last 2900 years.

This bowl of ricotta was our first course. Our second: Vincenzo and Maria placed a grill on the dying fire outside the cheese making room and we grilled a few sausages. With fresh bread and delicious pork sausages we ate lunch together on the steps in the courtyard. The wine, a Sicilian red from Planeta’s Etna winery was perfect with this lunch.

Bread in warm, just cooked ricotta followed by grilled pork and fennel sausages has got to be the ultimate Slow Food lunch.

Salve,

Suzanne

Edited August 2015:

The original blog said that it was the first meeting with Vincenzo. It was my second. The first time that I met Vincenzo was when we took a group of American guests, staying at The Sicilian House, to see ricotta being made two or three weeks earlier. (The second photo is from the first visit on May 20th) - and, that was my first time ever seeing ricotta being made.  

Vincent Schiavelli's "Many Beautiful Things' provided some background reading for the original blog. Suzanne