Fresh paneer made from 1 gallon of milk. Half of this is what is needed for the Sag Paneer recipe in Near & Far. The other half's fate is up to you, you lucky dog.
Setting out to cook my first recipe from Near & Far, Sag Paneer, I inadvertently met a real mind bender. Fresh, homemade PANEER. You know, paneer. The elusive ingredient you've always seen on the menu at your local Indian restaurant but never seen in any grocery store. They say it's cheese, but it looks like raw tofu and tastes like nothing. It's more likely a structural support so the saggy paneer you ordered doesn't appear to be a pile of 100% overcooked spinach, cause who would order that again? Well, turns out fresh paneer is SIMPLE to make and it's fluffy unfussy warm dairy nuggets (aka curds) taste so good that when you turn those steamy gems out of the pot you feel you are a famous chef. Yeah, I just made that.
So Heidi's Sag Paneer recipe, the completion of which was my goal for the evening, sent me on a detour to the back of the book. Here were the instructions for making PANEER. I say instructions because something this simple probably doesn't qualify as a recipe. As with any dish that has only 3 ingredients, Quality is Queen. I heated my gallon of organic pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized) Straus whole milk + 1/2 pint of the same whipping cream in a pot until it almost boiled. Turned off the heat and added 1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice. Within 10-20 seconds stealthy white coagulating lumps began to congregate at the surface in rapid succession. Woah! Was it happening? Just like that? Where were the problems? I was so ready to spend 30 minutes Googling "paneer problems" but here I was, already scooping out curds and stirring in the salt. That was easy. I had to taste. Prepared for a faceful of stale waxy cardboard flavor I was hit with De. Li. Cious. It's possible I wanted to spend the rest of the evening nibbling that mountain of fluffy springy goodness. I may have fantasized about it. BUT I tumbled and chased and wrangled those beauties into a Pyrex dish as instructed, put a sheet of parchment paper over the top, and weighted down the mess with a flat heavy object. So sorry to do that to you little lovers. We'll meet again.
After some time in the fridge I turned the chilled pressed paneer out onto a cutting board. Very similar to feta. Firm but not hard. Solid but riddled with vacant nooks and crannys. This was giving me A LOT of ideas. Pan fried with capers... Haloumi... Goat or sheep milk in place of the ubiquitous cow... What about a brine... More salt... More lemon... More fun! These are adventures I want to go on -- in the very PA-NEAR future folks.