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to the thinnest setting. The strips should stay wide, but they should be thin, almost translucent. Cut the pasta strips into 4 rectangles, each about 18 inches long. Dust the work surface with flour and then lay out one strip of pasta. Place 2 tablespoons of the ricotta mixture on the dough, centering it a few inches from one end. Put 3 more on that first strip of pasta, each mound about 4 inches from the last. Make a slight depression in each mound and then gently place 1 egg yolk in each depression. Brush the dough with water and cover with a second sheet of pasta. Press down gently around the filling, eliminating any air and sealing the dough. Cut between the ravioli with a knife. These are big, rustic ravioli with wide skirts. Repeat with the remaining pasta sheets. You should end up with 12 to 14 ravioli.

5. Fill a pot with water and bring to a low boil. Gently slip the ravioli, four at a time, into the water and poach gently, about 4 minutes. You want the pasta just shiny and cooked, but the yolks must remain bright and barely poached. Repeat with the remaining ravioli.

6. Melt the remaining butter in a skillet, add ⅓ cup of the pasta cooking water, and swirl to combine. Add the ravioli and gently push them around in the butter to coat. You don’t want the yolks to break before you serve them.

7. Place 2 ravioli on each plate. Sprinkle with Parmesan and serve immediately.

Makes 12 to 14 ravioli, to serve 6

CHAPTER 13

CHEESE

I did not expect to become a cheese maker any more than I expected to become a chicken fancier. I had read a book about cheesemaking once and was put off by all the rules and temperatures and humidity readings and pieces of special equipment. I was discouraged by the repeated use of the word “sanitize.” When on a whim I signed up for a Camembert-making class at a co-op grocery, my expectations were low. The idea that I could make Camembert—the soft, mold-ripened French cheese—struck me as amusing and unlikely.

There were two teachers that day at the Camembert workshop. Sacha Laurin, an expatriate Australian cheesemaker, announced right off that she kept her distance from certain ingredients, such as animal-based rennet and calcium chloride, an additive that can help milk form a curd. (They are both probably harmless, but frowned upon by purists.) Sacha was lovely and articulate and orderly, a believer in rules of hygiene and timing, the precise, principled artisan I imagined all cheesemakers to be.

The other teacher was Steve Shapson, a cheesemaker from Wisconsin, who ignored the clock and used calcium chloride with abandon. He never let tending the cheese get in the way of telling a story, and he was a fount of stories.

The pair of them—together—taught me the most important and liberating lesson I’ve learned about making cheese, and it is one that applies to cooking more broadly: there are as many ways to make good cheese as there are cheesemakers. At the end of the class Sacha and Steve arrayed some of their Camemberts on a platter, maybe a dozen in all. Some of them were coated in herb, some in ash, some in dried lavender; some were made by perfectionist Sacha on a warm day and some on a cold day and some were made by Steve, perhaps while he was answering e-mail and simultaneously brewing a batch of beer. Each cheese was recognizably Camembert and each was entirely different, sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly so, and there was not a single one that I did not want to eat. Cheese is made differently by different people all over the world. The rules are constantly bent and disregarded and religiously adhered to, depending on the cheese-maker. You do not need a stopwatch in your pocket and a clipboard in your hand—unless you work better that way. The cheese you make will reflect your choices and personality, as well as the weather and the conditions in your house and the milk you started with.

“Is it milk season?” Mark asked when he saw the quantity of milk I had bought on my way home. Yes, it was milk season. I made Camembert the next day and for the next six weeks