The fresh, bright, creamy taste of ricotta makes a wonderful addition to both sweet and savoury dishes, lending luxurious body to sauces, thickening mixtures for baking or simply piped onto canapés. As a fresh Italian cheese, it can be bought ready-made or easily created at home – you don’t even need any special equipment.

If you fancy going all-out and making your own ricotta for a dish, our collection of ricotta recipes gives you plenty to choose from. Chantelle Nicholson’s combination of Homemade ricotta, romesco sauce, fennel and rye is a beautifully light and fresh salad that’s bursting with flavour, while Pollyanna Coupland’s Chicken skin canapés are the perfect way to impress friends at a dinner party. You can use homemade or shop-bought ricotta for any of these recipes – the Galvin brothers’ Penne rigate with morels, broad beans, English peas, ricotta and preserved lemon is an incredible pasta dish for springtime, and if you’re craving something sweet, you can’t go wrong with Pierre Koffmann’s Caramelised apple with ricotta crème diplomat and arlettes.

As a fresh cheese, ricotta should be used as quickly as possible – however, there are salted, aged version of ricotta found in Italy (ricotta salate) which keep for longer.