You can make this with good quality bought ricotta.
Ingredients
Mushrooms
Fresh ricotta
Hazelnut and garlic butter
Method
Main
1.For fresh ricotta, wet base of a large heavy-based saucepan, pour in milks and cream and place over high heat. Combine yoghurt and 1 tsp salt. Bring milk mixture to the boil and allow it to rise up the sides of the saucepan, stir in yoghurt and reduce heat to low-medium. Without stirring, gently spin the saucepan and bring just back to boiling. Remove from heat, cool curds completely in whey, then pour curds into a broad sieve – the curds are the ricotta.
2.For hazelnut and garlic butter, cook butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until the milk solids in the bottom of the pan begin to brown. Dip the base of the pan into cold water to arrest cooking and cool. Transfer butter and brown milk solids from the bottom of pan to a food processor, add nuts and garlic and process until finely chopped. The butter can be made up to one day ahead and refrigerated.
3.Combine lemon rind, ½ tsp coarsely ground black pepper and dried chilli and set aside.
4.Purée tomatoes in a food processor and measure out 200ml. Place in a small saucepan, bring to the boil, strain through a fine sieve placed over another small saucepan, pressing to extract jui-ces, discarding pulp. Reduce juices over medium heat to 30ml, then set tomato essence aside.
5.Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat, add hazelnut and garlic butter, then add fresh mushrooms, skin-side down, and sauté for 8 minutes or until soft. Meanwhile, drain ceps, reserving liquid, and coarsely chop. Add ceps to pan, increase heat to high, add wine, tomato essence and ceps liquid and cook for 10 minutes or until liquid reduces. Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Remove mushrooms from pan, thickly slice, then return to pan to keep warm.
6.Divide mushrooms among plates, scatter with lemon rind mixture and serve with ricotta.
Note Phillip Searle uses a combination of wild mushrooms, such as slippery Jacks, fairy rings, grey geese and saffron milk caps. Dried ceps are available from specialty food stores.
Drink Suggestion: White Burgundy. Drink suggestion by Max Allen
Notes