Food & Recipes

Fresh Ricotta Recipe – Quick and Easy Share With Friends

Fresh Ricotta Recipe with Roasted Grapes, Fresh Thyme, on Grilled Bread

I love to invite my girlfriends over for a party and I especially love to try new recipes on them but my problem is that I tend to go a little overboard with the number of dishes and how complex (steps not fancy) they are. So when I decided to have them over for my housewarming I started to go a little crazy with the planning. This can happen – just ask my friend that I stuffed 75 mini artichokes for when she had a baby shower for her second son over 30 years ago. I’m hopeless.

Anyway, I started to plan by looking up easy party appetizers and found the simplest recipe from Alexandra’s Kitchen for Roasted Grapes with Fresh Thyme and Fresh Ricotta on Grilled Bread. She gave credit to Real Simple Magazine Sept 2011 but wasn’t able to find the exact recipe so she just listed the ingredients. The point is that it was so simple I decided I would start with it.

This all looked extremely simple and then there was the issue of the fresh ricotta. The challenge (I thought) was to actually make fresh ricotta, but it turned out to be the most impressive but absolutely easiest thing I’ve ever done in the kitchen. Here is where my own personal crazy pops up because I had decided that I was going to “go for it” and make it fresh, a first for me. I looked for “best fresh ricotta” recipe in Google and came up with [url href=”http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/homemade-ricotta-recipe.html”]this recipe[/url] from Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa).

I have to say that this was the most simple and delicious thing I made. It was great room temp and cold. It was just more than I could have hoped for. I decided to drizzle some organic honey over the crostinis-it was a hit! These roasted grapes would have been fabulous over ice cream too!

Ingredients

  • Grapes
  • Olive oil
  • Kosher salt
  • Fresh thyme sprigs
  • Good rustic bread, sliced into 1/2-inch thick pieces
  • Fresh ricotta, preferably homemade

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 450ºF.
  2. Spread grapes onto a sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt. Lay thyme leaves over top. Toss all together gently with your hands.
  3. Place pan in the oven for 7 to 9 minutes or until grapes just begin to burst. I prefer the shorter roasting time — it’s nice when some of the grapes remain intact.
  4. Meanwhile, heat a grill or grill pan to medium-high. Brush the bread with olive oil. Grill until nice and toasty.
  5. Assemble the open-faced sandwiches:
    • Spread fresh ricotta over bread.
    • Top with roasted grapes.
    • Discard thyme sprigs – while the thyme sprigs look pretty, it’s a little impractical to serve the sandwiches with the sprigs… they don’t taste so yummy.

 

RELATED ARTICLES

SUBSCRIBE TO FRAN BERGER LIVING

get notified with the latest updates