Ricotta

When was the last time you had a truly memorable dessert in an Italian restaurant? If it's been a while, look in on Solo Mio in Old City, which prides itself on its homemade ricotta cheesecakes and a ricotta-pasta pie. Solo Mio is the kind of place many restaurants try to be: friendly, budget- priced and so spotless that you'll notice. First-time customers are treated like regulars. The staff is well-informed about the menu. The pizzas, pasta dishes and desserts are made with skill and pride.

Reach for the ricotta when you want to make a meatless main course guaranteed to please. Super-rich in dairy nutrition, ricotta cheese is the protein power behind lasagna, everybody's favorite meatless entree, but there are other ways to use it. Traditional lasagna dishes are high in fat and calories thanks to other cheeses. Ricotta is an Italian word that means "recooked," a nod to its origin as a cheese traditionally made from the lean low-calorie whey, the liquid drained off the high fat milk used in the production of provolone and other full-fat cheeses.

There's enough bad press about cheese to make a self-respecting cow think of kicking the bucket. Cited as a harbinger of heart attack, and spurned by generations of bland-palate diners as a food that only the smell-blind could love, an entire world of noble cheeses with all their gustatory idiosyncrasies is rapidly being processed into near-extinction. When is the last time you had a Camembert bulging ripe, pungent with raw Norman milk and a sweet hint of almond? Is there a Cheddar in your memory clabbered to a curd so fat that every slice hovers between solidarity and total collapse?

Amid the recent fervor for artisan cheesemaking, mild-mannered ricotta has largely been left behind in the firm embrace of big industry's plastic tubs. In a little storefront on East Passyunk Avenue, however, Philip Mancuso remains a notable holdout: the last of South Philly's masters of handmade ricotta. The Italian matrons who came to buy fresh curds for their ravioli and cheesecakes since Mancuso's father, Lucio, founded this cozy storefront in 1940, are fewer and far between. But Mancuso still makes it fresh weekly, storing tall clouds of the cheese in a glass refrigerator behind his counter.

If you can't hold on until the Feast of St. Joseph (March 19), Termini Bros. in South Philly is frying up zeppole all month long. They're not quite donuts; and not quite like the Sicilian originals (which were topped with cream and a cherry). At Termini's the zeppole's soft egg dough is twice fried to give it a crisp crust, then filled with a vanilla custard or ricotta cream. The dusting of powdered sugar still has a signature touch of cinnamon, as it has for the last 87 years.

Beyond the same old cheesecake Tucked in the cheese cases at Claudio's is a lightly bronzed, Bundt-shaped wonder of a "cake" called baked ricotta di bufala. No eggs. No flour. Just a fine-textured ricotta from cow's milk and water buffalo milk, baked with sugar and a hint of lemon. If you've sworn off cheesecake, this elegant dessert will win you back. Kitchen friends For little hands eager to help in the kitchen, these colorful silicone kitchen tools are perfect stocking stuffers for budding chefs.

It is still morning, but cheesemaker Lino Esposito and his crew are well into a workday that started for some at 2 a.m. and was in high gear by 5. A worker stirs the final vat of what was milk not yet 24 hours from the cow. Stray globs of milk solids are eased into the spongy masses of curd floating atop the thin liquid whey. Earlier batches became creamy rounds of fresh mozzarella - fior de latte. Now this same basic curd, with small changes in timing or temperature or added enzyme, will yield cheeses of varying taste and texture.

I don't know about you, but the recession has done nothing to curb my appetite for fancy cheese, just my ability to buy it. So I set out to make the stuff at home. That explains why I soon found myself pouring curdled milk into an old pillowcase; dialing up the cheese-making equivalent of the Butterball Turkey hot line; and, eventually, eating some very good and some not-so-good cheese. "You make a lot of bad cheese before you make good cheese," said Kate Dallam, owner of Broom's Bloom Dairy in Bel Air, Md. I started with ricotta and saw that the recipe called for the cheese to drain in "butter muslin," a type of cheesecloth with a tighter-than-usual weave.

LITTLE ROCK CAFE, 5214 Atlantic Avenue, Ventnor, N.J. (609-823-4411) (8/13/87) $$$ This California-style cafe is one of the few places in the Atlantic City area with a trendy eclectic menu so familiar to Philadelphians. Ditto for the decor which looks like it could have been done by committee. Portions are generous but leave room for dessert. Recommended: Shrimp zoom ($7.50), ricotta cheesecake and carrot cake (each $3). Rating: Good . Very Good . Splendid . . Worth a 45-mile detour, and a change of plans.

For many of us, Indian summer is the best time to visit the Jersey Shore: The temperatures and ocean are still warm and, best of all for restaurant- goers, the summer crowds are long gone. So now is an excellent time to visit Via Veneto, a splendid southern Italian restaurant in Linwood where everything is home-cooked to order; approaching its two-year anniversary in the Central Square shopping center on Route 9 between Atlantic City and Ocean City, the friendly, informal restaurant is open year-round.

Staring out the window of his cheese shop one slow afternoon, Philip Mancuso declares himself "the last of the Mohicans. " After almost 70 years on Passyunk Avenue near Mifflin Street, the store's competition is long gone, along with many of the old-timers who craved Lucio Mancuso & Son's handmade cheese. Nowadays, hardly anyone makes homemade anything, Mancuso says plainly, more observation than criticism. Dinner, he says, comes frozen or ready-made. Then, there's the flat economy.

I don't know about you, but the recession has done nothing to curb my appetite for fancy cheese, just my ability to buy it. So I set out to make the stuff at home. That explains why I soon found myself pouring curdled milk into an old pillowcase; dialing up the cheese-making equivalent of the Butterball Turkey hot line; and, eventually, eating some very good and some not-so-good cheese. "You make a lot of bad cheese before you make good cheese," said Kate Dallam, owner of Broom's Bloom Dairy in Bel Air, Md. I started with ricotta and saw that the recipe called for the cheese to drain in "butter muslin," a type of cheesecloth with a tighter-than-usual weave.

Beyond the same old cheesecake Tucked in the cheese cases at Claudio's is a lightly bronzed, Bundt-shaped wonder of a "cake" called baked ricotta di bufala. No eggs. No flour. Just a fine-textured ricotta from cow's milk and water buffalo milk, baked with sugar and a hint of lemon. If you've sworn off cheesecake, this elegant dessert will win you back. Kitchen friends For little hands eager to help in the kitchen, these colorful silicone kitchen tools are perfect stocking stuffers for budding chefs.

Amid the recent fervor for artisan cheesemaking, mild-mannered ricotta has largely been left behind in the firm embrace of big industry's plastic tubs. In a little storefront on East Passyunk Avenue, however, Philip Mancuso remains a notable holdout: the last of South Philly's masters of handmade ricotta. The Italian matrons who came to buy fresh curds for their ravioli and cheesecakes since Mancuso's father, Lucio, founded this cozy storefront in 1940, are fewer and far between. But Mancuso still makes it fresh weekly, storing tall clouds of the cheese in a glass refrigerator behind his counter.

XIX (no, it has nothing to do with the Superbowl despite the Roman numerals) is located on the 19th floor of the Bellevue building and currently is one of the few dining spots with a sweeping skyline view of the city. There are two rooms, each appointed with original decorative plaster and a grand dome, but the Caf? is where the dinner special is served. It also hosts one of the most spectacular outdoor public balconies in Philadelphia. There's nothing like escaping the dirt and grit of the city, rising above it all and observing traffic from a perch that makes the daily grind of our streets more like a Matchbox playset.

If you can't hold on until the Feast of St. Joseph (March 19), Termini Bros. in South Philly is frying up zeppole all month long. They're not quite donuts; and not quite like the Sicilian originals (which were topped with cream and a cherry). At Termini's the zeppole's soft egg dough is twice fried to give it a crisp crust, then filled with a vanilla custard or ricotta cream. The dusting of powdered sugar still has a signature touch of cinnamon, as it has for the last 87 years.

For 55 years The Silver Spoon cookbook was printed only in Italian. Periodically updated and expanded, the 1,200-page classic never went out of print or lost its appeal. No surprise then that when an English-language edition was finally released on Nov. 8, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, the first printing of 200,000 copies (at $39.95 each from Phaidon Press) sold out before Christmas. Now in its fourth printing, The Silver Spoon is turning out to be the blockbuster of all cookbooks.

Thanksgiving, that quintessentially American celebration, is taking on renewed meaning because of the horrors this autumn has wrought. People are giving thanks for the tangible pleasures of hearty home cooking, of visiting family, for the often-overlooked blessing of being alive. Yet this will be quite a different holiday season, in a nation that now has an Office of Homeland Security. Letters to St. Nick will be irradiated against anthrax. We're at war in a country so rooted in the ancient age it maintains a cavalry with actual horses.

After 82 years, the Maggio family is quitting the cheese business. M. Maggio Co. Inc., a South Philadelphia institution whose ricotta and mozzarella are found in virtually every local supermarket, will be sold to Crowley Foods Inc., a Binghamton, N.Y., dairy distributor. Crowley said yesterday it will buy Maggio for an undisclosed price and shut the Maggio plant on South Seventh Street. Crowley will distribute Maggio brand cheeses from its Ready Food Products manufacturing and distribution operation in Northeast Philadelphia, said Crowley spokesman Robert Cline.

It is still morning, but cheesemaker Lino Esposito and his crew are well into a workday that started for some at 2 a.m. and was in high gear by 5. A worker stirs the final vat of what was milk not yet 24 hours from the cow. Stray globs of milk solids are eased into the spongy masses of curd floating atop the thin liquid whey. Earlier batches became creamy rounds of fresh mozzarella - fior de latte. Now this same basic curd, with small changes in timing or temperature or added enzyme, will yield cheeses of varying taste and texture.