Tomato Ricotta Sauce

Tomato Sauce with Ricotta, creamy and savory with Ricotta Forte from Salento

Pralina's Tomato Sauce with Ricotta is a sugo alla Ricotta Forte from Salento that combines mild tomato with the savory depth of traditional sheep's milk Ricotta Forte. It is not an ordinary cream sauce, but a recipe that draws its strength from an ancient Salento cheese.

Tomato Sauce with Ricotta from Pralina consists of a good 85 percent tomato, refined with onion, extra virgin olive oil, and five percent Ricotta Forte made from pure sheep's milk. This ricotta is not a fresh breakfast ricotta, but a matured, salty, and spicy specialty that has been used to refine sauces in Puglia for generations. It is precisely this spice that turns a simple tomato sauce into a little piece of Salento cuisine.

Starts mild, ends with a savory finish

Initially, it tastes sweet and rounded like a good tomato sauce, before the Ricotta Forte adds its salty, piquant note. Not a sharp heat, but rather a hearty undertone that lingers on the palate.

Creamy, savory, hearty – this sauce thrives on the contrast between the sweetness of sun-ripened tomatoes and the maturity of the sheep's cheese. Those unfamiliar with Ricotta Forte will find this its most accessible form, gently incorporated rather than served pure and raw. In Salento families, Ricotta Forte is often eaten undiluted on a slice of bread; here, its savory flavor is distributed evenly throughout the sauce.

For wide pasta and oven-roasted vegetables

This sauce loves wide noodles: tagliatelle, pappardelle, or orecchiette, which absorb the creamy texture well. It also unfolds beautifully over oven-roasted vegetables like eggplant or zucchini.

It works well as a base for a quick casserole or as a sauce for roasted chicken when you need a meal in a hurry on a weekday. Stirred briefly into risotto, the savory Ricotta Forte also spreads pleasantly throughout the whole dish. For those who prefer a purist approach, there is the milder Tomato Basil Sauce, and for those who prefer it fruitier, the Cherry Tomato Sauce from Pralina. Both come from the same artisan producer in Melpignano.

An old Salento specialty in a jar

Ricotta Forte, also known as Ricotta Scanta in Italian, is a traditionally fermented sheep's milk ricotta from Puglia that acquires its strong, slightly piquant spice through repeated kneading and ripening over several weeks. Originally created to preserve leftover ricotta, it is now a prized ingredient of Salento cuisine that is barely known in this form outside of Puglia.

Since its founding in 1991, Pralina has been cooking in Melpignano, southern Italy, south of Lecce, with a team of about 20 employees, preferably processing what the region itself produces, from tomatoes to Ricotta Forte.

Pralina sources its ingredients largely from its own region: through a so-called "Patto con la Terra," a pact with five local farms in Salento, the company ensures the origin and freshness of its tomatoes, herbs, and, of course, the Ricotta Forte are traceable.

In this way, the Tomato Sauce with Ricotta combines two Salento ingredients, tomato and sheep's ricotta, in a single 180-gram jar. If you would like to learn more about the manufacturer, you can find the entire Pralina range or other pasta sauces of Italian origin in our shop.

A spoonful of cold olive oil at the end

Gently warmed and refined with a spoonful of cold olive oil just before serving, the spice of the Ricotta Forte is further rounded off. Whether with pasta, oven-roasted vegetables, or as a hearty spread—once opened, it keeps for a few days in the refrigerator.