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A little while back, in this thread Cajungal asked for some suggestions about what to do with milk that was near expiring. I suggested she make paneer, a kind of indian homemade cheese.

Well, yesterday my fiancee bought a gallon of milk not knowing that I'd already bought a gallon that day. So, today, I made paneer, and this afternoon, I made a dish known as saag paneer (spinach and cheese).



I made the paneer, cubed it, and lightly fried it in ghee (clarified butter). Then I blanched the spinach, cooked some onions, ginger, and garlic with curry powder, folded everything together with some plain non-flavored yogurt (which is surprisingly not easy to find in small quantities).

tadaa! Saag paneer. Yum! In the pic, the cubes that look like croutons are the lightly fried cheese bits.

Your recipe for paneer. Give it to me.

/terminator

What can I say, I'm queer for paneer and that photo sent me over the edge.

Now I've had really flavorful paneer, and also kind of bland. Neither of them were spiced; wondering if the former used whole milk and the latter used 2%?

Also, this is a weird question, but how do you know when the milk's all curdled? I've been looking at pictures and in some it still looks very watery and in others, not so much.

You need to come to my house and cook this spinach dish for me. I'd be the only one here that would eat it.

Tinwhistler said:

Zen: When i'm doing it, it starts looking pretty obvious. The water won't be clear, but it'll be only a little cloudy. It'll seem obvious that there's no more milk solids.

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Gotcha. I just extricated the last of my cheesecloth from the depths of a drawer and will add a couple of items to Mr. ZM's shopping list.

That looks sooooo good.

I got hold of a half-gallon of raw milk this weekend and made yogurt to see what would happen (I usually use pasteurized whole milk). I'm not a fan of drinking raw milk since it's extremely rich and kind of smells like cow to me, but I was hoping the bacteria would work their magic. The yogurt did indeed turn out awesome, but what I didn't expect was the layer of butter that settled on top. I had some on toast this morning and it was fucking incredible. I don't know whether to ascribe that to the yogurt process or the freshness, but damn.

Tinwhistler said:

I'm going to make chicken tikka masala for tonight..it's an Indian food day

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Same here (well, yesterday). I was thinking that the best chicken tikka masala I've ever had used chicken cooked in a tandoor and that most of the stuff I've had recently seemed to be pan-fried. Lacking a tandoor, I fired up some hardwood charcoal and grilled a few chicken breasts. I cubed that and put it in the masala and it made a big difference. Served it on some brown basmati cooked with a little cardamom and cinnamon with a side of spinach channa dal and raita made from the above mentioned awesome yogurt.

Neato, made my first batch (sorry the photo's blurry). Luna bar is for scale. It came out pretty well except I'm unsatisfied with my pressing method. One of these days I'll have a good cheese press.

Anyway, might try frying some of it and dressing it like my grilled halloumi, with parsley, lemon juice, and capers. Thanks for the inspiration and the recipe, Tin!

Here's some more paneer browned in olive oil and dressed in lemon juice and capers (à la grilled halloumi). I was experimenting with cooking it before it dried out, and unfortunately didn't have any parsley or garnish on hand.

Tinwhistler said:

looks great! How'd it taste?

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Also great! I'm using your method to press the paneer but now I want to rig up something fancier.

Tinwhistler said:

awesomesauce You can also add spices during the boiling phase, to give your paneer an added kick

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Yeah, I think that's the next step now that I more or less have it down.

Now my mouth is all watering...