Cheese Heads

Artisanal cheesemaking, just like everything else craft, is making a comeback in Cincinnati. Chefs relish the opportunity to make their own cheeses because it takes a short amount of time to produce a product that really makes an impact on a menu. Chefs can also ensure the cheese they make is consistent and affordable, as many of the ingredients needed to make cheese are already readily available in a working kitchen. 

Several local chefs in high-profile restaurants are harkening back to a more rustic time by concocting their own fresh cheeses in-house, and the results are outstanding. 

Ricotta cheese is generally associated with savory dishes such as lasagna, but it’s evolved into a stand-alone dish. Traditionally, ricotta is made with rennet (an acidic coagulate) and Italian water buffalo milk, but considering Italian water buffalo are hard to come by around here, local chefs are using cow or goat milk.

At The Mercer OTR, chef Dan Stoltz and chef de cuisine Jack Hemmer invented their ricotta dish, with onion compote and grilled bread, after being inspired by a ricotta and fig jam appetizer they had in New York. 

“Growing up, my family always had a cheese plate for family dinners,” Hemmer says. “It always was one of those things that was really enjoyable to share among everybody and eat. That kind of gave me the idea: What was something that we could have on the menu that groups of people could enjoy together while looking over the menu and deciding on what they want to eat?” 

To make The Mercer’s ricotta, Hemmer pours two gallons of milk and two quarts of cream into a pot, lets it come to an almost rolling boil, then drops a cup of vinegar (the coagulate they use instead of rennet) into the bath and removes it from the burner. (He doesn’t use a thermometer, though other chefs recommend this.) 

What happens next is science: The vinegar acid provokes the curds (the solids) to separate from the whey (the liquid). After sitting in the pot for 10 minutes, the mixture is dumped onto a fine cloth, covering a pan — Hemmer recommends using an old T-shirt or linen instead of a cheesecloth, which he says isn’t fine enough. The whey drains through the cloth for at least 30 minutes, sometimes as long as overnight. 

After draining, the ricotta solids are left behind. To create The Mercer’s ricotta starter, the solids are chilled for two hours, mixed with lemon juice, lemon zest and cracked fresh pepper, then topped with a housemade onion compote: chopped red onions; equal parts sugar, red wine vinegar, red wine and port wine; and a “sachet of spices.” It’s served with Sixteen Bricks’ sourdough baguette. 

“Anybody can make this,” Hemmer says. “It’s one step above making cereal — it’s that easy.” (Author’s note: We tried this at home and it was indeed simple.) The Mercer also makes its own crème fraîche, a fancy sour cream made with buttermilk, milk and lemon juice, that tops the restaurant’s butternut squash soup. 
Chef Brad Bernstein of Red Feather Kitchen in Oakley thinks the craft of cheesemaking has been lost over the generations and that the attraction of housemade ricotta goes back to familiarity. 
“(Customers) know it from lasagna and the stuff their mom used to cook, but they’re seeing it in a whole new way,” he says. “It’s not some crazy cheese that nobody knows. You have an expectation for what you’re going to get it, and when you get it, you’re wowed by the flavor.” 
While attending the Culinary Institute of America, Bernstein took a cheesemaking class, then started serving his ricotta (using lemon juice as an acid instead of vinegar) and a hand-pulled mozzarella dish with olive tapenade when Red Feather opened last year. They whip their ricotta in a mixer for extra creaminess, warm it up and drizzle olive oil, truffle oil and honey (culled from local beekeeper Andrew Kartal) and serve it with a smoky baguette. 
To make his mozzarella, Bernstein buys mozzarella curd from an outside vendor and does the final steps at the restaurant, which entails brining the cheese in a salt water solution, then pulling it, literally using his hands to knead, shape and form the cheese. 
Chef Nick Marckwald of soon-to-open OTR storefront Hen of the Woods uses both mozzarella and ricotta to make his burrata, a soft Italian-style cheese. Typically, burrata is a mozzarella shell housing a velvety cream center, but instead of an oozing middle, Marckwald’s version contains a more solid-based ricotta and cultured cream (buttermilk and cream) mixture. Marckwald uses high-end Wooster, Ohio’s Hartzler dairy grass-fed milk, and white wine vinegar. He started experimenting with burrata in 2010 and recently served it at Dutch’s (with Dutch’s persimmon butter sauce) and 1215 Wine Bar & Coffee Lab. 
“I think that it’s just one of those things that once people start to mess around with it, you realize it’s not really that scary,” Marckwald says.    Besides these chefs, many other restaurants are also making delicious cheeses, including Daniel Wright of Abigail Street (ricotta), John Tomain of 50 West (ricotta for lasagna), Jungle Jim’s (mozzarella) and veteran cheesemaker chef Todd Kelly of Orchids, who formulates both cow and goat milk ricotta, a five-week aged French Valençay-style goat milk cheese with ash, fromage blanc and chèvre. 

“Anyone can buy really good cheese, but it’s special for us to make it,” Kelly says. ©

This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2015.