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Areesha is the Arabic cousin of ricotta cheese. It's a simple process of heating milk, adding an acid, and watching chemistry at work. Some recipes will say to use vinegar to separate the curds and whey, but I urge you to use lemon juice as the flavor, in my mind, is the best you'll get. Use this for my Areesha Tomatoes Salad recipe, in pancakes, as a ravioli filling...really anywhere you might use ricotta.
4L of whole fat milk
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons salt
Warm the milk to 93C/ 200F degrees in a large pot. Remove the milk from heat. Pour in the lemon juice and the salt. Stir gently to combine. Let the pot of milk sit undisturbed for 10 minutes. After this time, the milk should have separated into clumps of milky white curds and thin, watery, yellow-colored whey. If you still see a lot of un-separated milk, add another tablespoon of lemon juice and wait a few more minutes.
Set a strainer over a bowl and line the strainer with cheesecloth. Scoop the big curds out of the pot with a slotted spoon and transfer them to the strainer. Pour the remaining curds and the whey through the strainer. Let the ricotta drain for about 60 minutes before storing
