Easy Cheese
No, not the squirt-from-a-can kind. (Don’t tell me you didn’t at least once in your life use your tongue as a cracker for a can of this? OK, maybe it was just me.) We’ve spied large blocks of paneer, the creamy, protein-rich Indian white cheese, at our local Asiamarkt (Kopenhagnerstr. at Schonhauser Allee). A half-kilo block will set you back 3.99 Euro — and combined with a large pack of frozen spinach will make enough sag paneer to last about a week and a half.
Now HIB cohort John tells me that the cheese has been hiding in the refrigerated section for some time (he does keep tabs on the tofu better than I) but I’m convinced it’s been recently added to the mix. Nevertheless, it’s a nice discovery timed with (hopefully) nicer weather — at home we’re moving gradually away from heavy foods to lighter fare as the days get longer and warmer. Paneer (or panir) is unsalted, completely vegetarian (not made with rennet) and can be used for both savory and sweet foods. I’m going to wrap a couple of blocks in store-bought puff pastry (with a chutney dip, an easy appetizer); once the sun’s out for real, a couple of slabs on the grill might be a good vegi barbecue option.
Now, true paneer fans out there are probably grumbling — this is a cheese that’s easily made at home. Do you make your own paneer? Tell us about it below (or check out this link for a step-by-step how-to) and share some recipes, too.
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April 14th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Is it cow, sheep or goat?
April 14th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Camporesi published widely on sensuousness and food in the Middle Ages. Eco quotes from one of his essays about cheese, which clearly had a stinking reputation in the Middle Ages. “For centuries popular opinion had it that the badness living inside the cheese, its “diabolicalness” was manifested in and announced by its smell, a smell which most people felt was disgusting and vile. After all it was made of dying matter, it was in a state of decay, shrivelled and rotten, a putrefying substance, harmful to health and bodily fluids. Won from the part of the milk that was separated off, the harmful scoriae, curdled from the worst part, the sludgy and earthy part of the white liquid. The unification of the most base substances, the opposite of butter which comes from the better, purer part of the milk. Cheese is nothing but a ‘res foeda, graveolens, immunda, putridaque’. Food for the poor. Nothing for the better off and worthy citizen. Nutrition, in a nutshell, for tramps and vagrants who live off dirt.”
April 15th, 2008 at 9:50 am
There used to be a restaurant in Schöneberg run by some odd Indian ethnic group whose cuisine revolved around panir, and one of the things they did was to take a block of it, open a pocket, and stuff it with this insane spice/vegetable/nut mixture and then stick it in the tandoor. When that was good it was fabulous. When it wasn’t it was like eating footwear. They also had a joint over behind the Zionskirche, but they’ve vanished.
Me, I like mattar panir, with green peas, but somewhere I have a stack of those tiny Indian regional cookbooks I bought in Berkeley with all sorts of intriguing uses for it. Wish I could find ‘em…
Oh, and B, sorry to tell your lactose-intolerant self this, but it’s cow.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
si, ’tis cow - but B, I’ve got the anti-lactose bug too, yet for some reason, this cheese doesn’t harass me as much as do others. it’s worth a try, as it is quite yummy.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
and W13 - three cheers to the rot and decomposition that feeds us all. where would be be without the stinky yeasties? Sans wine, bread and cheese.
on further thought: must ‘a been some seriously stinky cheese in the Middle Ages, if it could beat the body odors and open sewers of the Middle Ages in the “too nasty” department. Me, I’d happily keep a smear of Epoisses under my nose to fight back the stench.