9 Spring Ricotta Dishes We Can't Resist

Among the most versatile cheeses in the kitchen, creamy snow-white ricotta can serve as a palette for a wide range of flavors and colors. Simply mixed with honey it makes a luscious accompaniment to wedges of seasonal fruit. Sprinkled with crushed nuts and everything-bagel seasoning, it’s a protein-packed spoonable snack. Read more about ricotta.

But chefs have developed much more creative uses for ricotta, which is made from the whey of cow, sheep, goat, or Italian water buffalo milk (all of the dishes below use cow’s milk ricotta, either pre-made or made fresh in the kitchen).

Though available year-round, spring is traditionally primetime for ricotta, when fresh milk is abundantly available. We asked some chefs to tell us about their favorite ways to incorporate the cheese in their cooking.

Blueberry-ricotta pancakes

If you’ve gotta have ricotta all day long, Chef Andrew McCormack and griddle cook Anthony Sontanastaso of San Francisco’s Early to Rise have your morning taken care of.

“Butter on pancakes is already a staple,” says McCormack about the choice to serve buttermilk short stacks topped with a generous dollop of lemony whipped ricotta, house made blueberry syrup and a scatter of sweet, slivered almonds.

“We whip the ricotta with a little bit of cream, which lightens it up and encourages it to melt. It mixes with the sauce to really enriches and livens up the dish.”

There’s no skimping on that richness: Sontanastaso tucks another portion of the whipped ricotta between the two flapjacks.

Spring pea salad

Saffron ricotta salad — Spring pea ricotta salad

The delicate flavor of ricotta takes offers subtle nuances that can change with the seasons. Springtime often brings an extra hint of sweetness, which led Chef Ajay Walia of Saffron in San Carlos, California to the irresistible pairing of ricotta and fresh picked spring peas in this salad, offered as a seasonal special.

The composed but casual Indian-accented presentation includes leafy pea shoots and crunchy sugar snaps, but the secret (pea-cret?) weapon is a layer of bright spiced pea purée (with cumin, coriander, ginger and garlic) placed immediately atop a creamy base of ricotta). The combination adds a complex harmony of flavors and creamy textures beneath the less manipulated greens.

Walia slightly chars the pods and greens along with mint and cilantro to enhance their flavor, tosses them with thin shavings of watermelon radish, and tops it all with candied sunflower seeds and a distinctive drizzle of lime pickle vinaigrette.

Chocolate ricotta bruschetta

Chef Matt Accarrino’s indulgent creation is always available at Mattina, his morning-to-night San Francisco trattoria. It’s a perfect accompaniment to morning coffee and is featured as a starter on the lunch and dinner menu.

A thick, sensuous squiggle of lightly sweetened ricotta is piped over a generous slice of Accarrino’s signature chocolate, cherry, hazelnut bread and gilded with a touch of lemony olive oil. The bread is surprisingly savory, and and the ricotta just mildly sweet.

Pop-Tarts, eat your heart out.

Beet salad with whipped ricotta

The Garden Court restaurant at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel is justly renowned as the birthplace of Green Goddess dressing. But the storied room—now overseen by Executive Chef David Teig—has remained at the top of its salad game, recently adding what may become a new luncheon classic.

The refreshing twist on a familiar dish substitutes citrus-spiked whipped ricotta for the goat cheese that’s all too common in beet salads (The ricotta is blended with orange zest, honey and salt). This brings out the ruby root’s sweetness rather than its earthiness, an effect that the kitchen underscores with its choice of additional ingredients: Supremed Valencia oranges, an ingenious vanilla vinaigrette, and candied pistachios.

Forest floor gnocchi

Ricotta Gnocchi, Green Garlic, Fiddlehead Fern, Maitake, Cured Egg Yolk photo credit Mo Bejar

You say potato. I say ricotta. Which means when it comes to making gnocchi, I win! When you 86 the spuds and swap in fluffy ricotta, the potentially heavy duty dumplings are transformed into the tender, toothsome morsels that may be ricotta’s killer app.

At Foliage, a light-filled park side San Francisco dining room recently opened by Mo Béjar, the rurally raised chef describes his cooking as “innovative but simple,” eliciting clean, clear flavors from a superb local larder. It would be hard to get more local than Béjar’s ricotta: He makes it fresh in the restaurant kitchen, then combines it with just enough flour and egg to make the tiny clouds cohere. The gnocchi are frequently a part of Béjar’s weekly set menus, most recently serving as a creamy canvas for a bounty of fiddlehead ferns, green garlic, foraged mushrooms, showered with a light confetti of cured egg yolk.

Fried gnocchi with lemon

“When you fry ricotta gnocchi,” says Chef Scott Romano of 1932 Reserve on Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks, “The outside gets crispy while the inside becomes warm and gooey.”

Having that textural contrast adds an extra dimension to any dish and Romano adds even more sensory counterpoint by tossing these golden tidbits with fresh lemon butter, introducing a welcome tang to cut the dairy richness.

At this year’s festival, Romano paired his citrus-napped nuggets with pecan-smoked pulled ham.

Lasagne el forno

Lasagne al Forno photo credit World Red Eye

Ever since the 2003 opening of La Fuga, Michael Mayer’s critically lauded Fort Lauderdale restaurant, the chef had wanted to offer lasagne to his guests, in part as showcase for his housemade ricotta.

“Our ricotta is whole cow’s milk and heavy cream, brought to temperature with lemon juice and salt. It’s a very slow process that takes a couple of hours on the stove and a day of rest in the cooler, to make it creamy, but not runny.”

Mayer’s lasagne paradox was that he couldn’t abide serving square portions that had been cut out from a larger dish: “I picture lasagne enjoyed in a family home, with a group of people gathered around a steaming pan cutting up the dish, with the cheese pulling, the sauce, and pillowy ricotta oozing from the layers of fresh pasta.”

His solution was to source perfectly sized cast iron pans in which to create a baked-to-order lasagne for two. Recently added to La Fuga’s menu, it complements the ricotta with marinara sauce, bechamel and handmade sausage of pork shoulder, garlic, fennel, spices, and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Neapolitan pastiera

“I adore the cuisine of Campania, and particularly of Napoli,” says Chef Gianluca Guglielmi of the Berkeley, California’s Donato & Co. “One of my best friends is from there, and every year for Easter Sunday, his mom made an incredible pastiera, which I fell in love with.”

The traditional Neapolitan family dessert is a round, pastry dough shell filled with a homey mixture of ricotta blended with a batter of cracked wheat (Guglielmi substitutes farro) cooked in whole milk and vanilla, candied orange peel, and orange blossom water. Seven strips of pastry dough criss-cross the top of the tart, representing the roads of the ancient Greek city of Neapolis.

“We make our own ricotta,” says the chef. “We use organic Clover milk from Sonoma & fresh lemon juice. But good ricotta brands for baking include Calabro and Bellwether Farms.”

Ricotta cake

A fragrant hint of citrus is elemental to virtually all classic Italian ricotta desserts, At the Grove Restaurant of the Culinary Institute of America at Copia, Pastry Chef Ashley Goodloe also folds whole fresh raspberries into her lemon-infused ricotta cake batter to deliver contrasting pops of fruit flavor in every moist crimson-dotted slice.

Between the jewel-like berries and a drizzle of crème fraiche before serving, the homestyle satisfaction of a traditional dish is elevated to luxury status.