Cooking advice: using ricotta in pasta sauce

[manveruppd]

Bought this huge half-kilo chunk of soft ricotta cheese, and tried to make some pasta sauce using that and cream on two occasions, but the cheese refused to melt. The first time I tried it, I threw the ricotta (which I had chopped into small chunks) into the saucepan after I had poured in the cream. I left it gently simmering for 30', but the cheese refused to melt! The second time I thought I would try it differently, so I added the ricotta before pouring in the cream, by frying it over medium heat in butter (along with some onions and garlic). I thought that the cheese would melt in the butter and I could then pour in the cream, but, even though I had it over a reasonably low heat, it didn't even start melting. When I tried upping the heat, the little cubes of cheese started turning brown (which looked quite appetising but it wasn't really what I was looking for...), so I gave up and poured the cream in. 15' later I had a thick creamy sauce with unmelted chunks of cheese in it (again)!

Am I on to a loser here? Or am I just doing something wrong? Should I just give up and use the rest of the ricotta in a nice dessert? (Was thinking maybe in a crepe with banana and honey) Any advice from OcUK's resident gourmandes?

 

[manveruppd]

Hmm... ok, I suspected as much, thanks for confirming it! I'll use the rest in some nice crepes with banana and honey then, unless anyone has any other easy dessert recipes that use it! I've got a big chunk of the stuff left so I can afford to experiment with a few different things!

 

[manveruppd]

Feta does melt. There's various varieties: mature feta is pretty hard and it'll probably take ages, but soft feta melts just fine, especially if you squish it into a paste with a fork before throwing it into the sauce rather than keeping it in cubes.
Halloumi isn't supposed to melt though, you can get it a little runny in an oven if it's hot enough but it'll never melt completely (unless it's cheap industrialised halloumi rather than proper traditional stuff).