Meatless Monday: Making The Richest Paneer Ever

So, I can be lazy.

That’s the only excuse I can possibly have for not making my own paneer regularly.

Paneer, for those who don’t know, is the only native cheese of India, and is made by heating milk to a boil and then adding an acid such as lemon juice or white vinegar, and stirring off the heat until the curds form.

Then you strain out the whey, rinse the curds, and squeeze out the moisture, then press as much moisture out of the cheese as possible with a heavy weight.

The active part of the cheesemaking takes about twenty minutes or so. No really. And then you let it get pressed for three to five hours, until it is a firm as you want it to be.

That’s it.

Now you see that I really have had no excuse whatsoever for not making paneer often.

Except for laziness.

And that’s no real excuse.

Especially once you -taste- homemade paneer. It is so superior to even the best commercial paneer in flavor and texture that they seem almost as if they are two different foods altogether. They really shouldn’t be compared. It just isn’t fair to the stuff you buy in the store.

And once you cook with it and taste it in say, muttar paneer–you will be spoiled forever. I mean it. For real. FOREVER.

So, I am guessing that I’ll be making paneer about every other week or so from now on.

Oh, darn.

I can hear Zak weeping over it from here. (He puts up with so much crap from me; I don’t even know how he does it.)

This first batch of paneer I made with Snowville Creamery Half & Half instead of whole or two percent milk. I had read about making paneer this way in Raghavan Iyer’s excellent 660 Curries and wanted to give it a try. He said he made paneer this way for a creamier mouthfeel, and I was curious about how it would go.

The cheese came together very easily–and the curds were a rich ivory color from the butterfat from the pastured cows, and silken smooth. I worried for a while that it would be too soft to fry up at all, even after pressing, but though it was more delicate than commercially made paneer, I could still fry it just fine.

There are a couple of tricks to it, though.

One, be sure your oil and pan are heated all the way before you put the cheese in. If you put the cheese in too soon it will start to melt before frying and make an UGLY MESS (tm, patent pending.) Not a good thing.

Two, be advised that this paneer will be more moist than commercial paneer–mainly because it is not being pressed in a big old machine to get all the whey out–so, when you fry it–it will sputter and pop sizzling hot oil even more than the stuff from the store. If you can believe it. Oy. Wear long sleeves and eye protection. No low-necked shirts, either. You know, now that I think on it, a balaclava wouldn’t have been a bad idea either.

Three–it browns faster than the commercial brands I’ve fried–and I’ve fried lots of them both at home and in a restaurant kitchen. AND, because it browns faster, I’d suggest putting fewer cubes of it in the pan so you have fewer bits to worry about at one time. You have to turn them quicker.

And then we come to four. This particular style of homemade paneer is fairly fragile, probably because of its lower protein content. Remember, protein is what holds cheese together, so keep in mind that if you make your paneer with half & half, you have to handle it gently when you fry it and turn it. I used a spatula in one hand and a table fork in the other and was as deft as humanly possible and even so I still broke a few pieces. So, be careful and treat this higher-fat paneer with kid gloves and kindness.

Or, you could be a sensible person and use whole milk instead of half & half! (Or do what I plan on doing next and use one quart of whole milk and one of half & half–that way you are still adding a bit more fat for a creamier texture, but not so much that the cheese is so finicky to fry.

Speaking of texture–the cheese is like firm cream cheese in texture. Very firm cream cheese. And it is similar in flavor–very rich, like the veritable essence of milk. When fried, the outside turns into a crisp lacy crust that gives way to an airy-light melting richness. It’s very hard to describe, but it is heavenly. In fact, I am convinced that if there are angels, that they eat food that is like this paneer–something that is crisp and light and rich and silky all at the same time.

Don’t you want to try to make something that angels would eat in your very own kitchen? Don’t you? Come on, you do, I know you do. And it is SO easy. It really is. Simple. Simple, simple.

Use this recipe and give it a shot–then turn it into any one of the paneer recipes I will list at the end for you. You won’t be sad that you did it. You won’t regret it. You will be happy, and you tastebuds will be happy and your family and friends will be happy.

You want to be happy, don’t you?

Then dance on into your kitchen and start makin’ yourself some cheese!

The Richest Paneer Ever
Ingredients:

2 quarts of half & half–the best you can get (or, use 1 quart of whole milk and 1 of half & half for a firmer, less rich cheese)
1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar

Method:

Wash out your sink really well. I mean it. Squeaky clean. Cleanliness is necessary when playing with dairy product. Then take out your colander and line it with several layers of clean cheesecloth. I used four.

Put half and half or the half and half and milk mixture in a heavy bottomed, deep pot. Cook, stirring often, over medium heat until the milk comes to a boil. Do now allow the milk to scorch.

When the milk has boiled, turn off the heat and add the vinegar all at once and stir gently. Immediately, you will see curds begin to form, and the milk will separate into creamy colored curds and a greenish, thin, watery whey.

When all of the curds have formed–which should take about three to five minutes of gentle, slow stirring off heat–pour the contents of the pot gently into your prepared colander. Run cold water over the curds in the colander until they cool just enough for you to touch them.

With very clean hands, rinse and work the curds through the water stream, rinsing assiduously in order to remove the vinegar and as much of the whey as is possible.

When the rinsing is done, and you will know if you poke your nose near your cheese–it should have no vinegar scent left to it at all. It should in fact smell just like fresh, delicious milk–gather up the edges of the cheesecloth and squeeze the ball of curds within it, twisting it up tightly in the cloth so that as much whey as you can get out is forced from the cheese into the sink.

When you have squeezed the cheese until you hands hurt (that sounds vaguely naughty), remove the colander from the sink and place it in a larger bowl that will hold it. Put the cheese, still wrapped up in the cloth, into the colander and flatten it out nicely. Then, put something or somethings heavy on top of it.

I used my granite Thai mortar and pestle, with an eight pound free weight plate set on top of it.

Leave the cheese alone to be pressed and drained–dairy products like a little privacy when they are being magically transmuted from one delicious form into another more delicious form. Leave it for three to five hours–for firmer paneer–press it longer.

(In retrospect, if I’d had the time, I think that my paneer might not have been so sputtery and spitty in the frying pan if I had enough time for a full five our press. But, I could only spare three and a half hours, so sometimes you takes what you can gets….)

When the pressing is finished, take the weights off the cheese, unwrap it from its mummification bandages and set it on a plate or cutting board and admire it.

Then, carefully cut it into cubes and pan fry it as described in my recipe for methi malai paneer

Use the fried paneer in any recipe you like, though I am partial to saag paneer. (Mattar paneer and Methi malai paneer are both excellent as well. Just not as good as saag paneer.)

The First Harvest

It’s true. I should probably have let these little “Plum Purple” radishes grow a bit bigger before pulling them, but these marble-sized babies were so cute, I just had to bring them home from the garden plot.

Kat ate one of them last night at dinner–it was her first radish. She watned to try it because not only had she helped grow it, but it was purple. Purple vegetables are superior, of course.

Speaking of purple vegetables, our “All Blue” potato plants are growing quickly–so quickly in fact that we’ll need to hill them up next week. You can see them in the foreground here, surrounded with baby red, yellow and white onions. In the background are our “Cherokee Purple,” “Green Zebra” and “Black from Tula” heirloom tomatoes, some of which have already started to blossom! The purple radishes are interplanted among the tomato plants and will be really ready to harvest in a week, maybe less. Interplanted among the potatoes are “French Breakfast” radishes.

I always plant fast-growing crops like radishes or lettuces among slower growing crops like tomatoes–they take up the space until the bigger crops take off and need the room. By then, the radishes are ready to harvest, and from the same bit of soil, two crops are grown at the same time.

I do the same thing with onions, though they aren’t fast growing. They actually grow quite slowly, but they are small and are easy to tuck in here and there among other crops. They also can repel various pests with their aromatic natures, much the way that the smell of marigolds repel some bugs above ground while the chemicals exuded from their roots repel nematodes.

Companion planting and intercropping are just two ways to maximize space and use the natural defense mechanisms that plants posses to protect themselves to also protect other plants.

As more vegetables and fruits ripen and are ready to harvest, I’ll write about them and keep everyone up to date.

Roasted Beets With Basil Honey Lemon Vinaigrette

After yesterday’s “meat orgy” post, I thought I should talk about vegetables today. You know, just to balance things out a bit.

Besides, these beets were one of the vegetable side dishes we had with those decadent steaks, and they were so refreshing with the beef, I figured I should share them here.

And, besides all of that, the beets were miraculous, because Kat tried one and loved it. That’s a big thing for a four year old. I’d have hated it at four, because, believe it or not, beets were one of the few vegetables I could not stand as a child. Nope. Hated them. They tasted like dirt to me. Now they taste earthy and sweet and delicious–and I am happy that Kat doesn’t have to wait until her mid-twenties like I did to figure that out!

Roasting beets is the simplest way to prepare them, and is the best way to retain their brilliant, stained-glass colors. All you do is preheat your oven at 350 degrees F. and then scrub the living heck out of your beets with a vegetable brush, slice the beet tops off as close to the beet as possible, then pull off the root hair business. Then, just rub them well with good olive oil (not your best olive oil, just good olive oil), drizzle some extra olive oil in the bottom of a small casserole dish and plop the beets in there, then slide them into the oven.

Then, wait until they are tender all the way through. Test with a table fork–not a sharp meat fork–a table fork. If the tines sink in with the same basic resistance they would get from barely room temperature butter–then voila! The beets are perfect.

I can’t tell you how long this cooking process will take because I don’t know how big your beets are. With medium small ones–a bit bigger than a golf ball–like I cooked here, they’ll usually take about forty-five minutes. Big baseball sized beets will take longer.

Now comes the hard part. Well, it isn’t hard, just a little messy.

Peeling the beets.

You will note that there are no pictures of me peeling these beets. There is a reason for that–when I do process photos for my recipes, I do them myself, usually while I’m in the middle of whatever technique it is I am trying to illustrate.

Well, peeling roasted beets requires disposable gloves and a paring knife and lots of slippery bright magenta or orange beet juice, and you know, adding a camera to that mix is just not a grand idea. I can just imagine me getting beet juice and olive oil all over the camera and having the thing slip right out of one hand while I’m peeling with the other and toppling lens-first right into the bowl of peeled beets, resulting in both a ruined camera and ruined beets.

So, take my word for it–just put on gloves, put the camera down and get to work peeling those beets. You’ll need a paring knife at least to get started with the beets, and nimble fingers. And patience–yes, patience.

All you do is let the beets cool just enough so you can touch them. Their skins will be wrinkly and in part will be standing out from the flesh of the beets. Pick a spot where the skin is sticking out from the beet, pierce that section with your paring knife, slice off a strip of skin and then peel off the skin with your fingers. Continue until the beet is completely peeled, cutting off the very tip of the root. Then repeat on your other beets as necessary.

Finally, cut the beets into whatever shapes and sizes you want. For this recipe, I cut them in half and then cut them into 1/4″ half-moon shaped slices. But if you had gigantic beets, you could just as easily dice them and it would be equally pretty when done.

Then, make the vinaigrette. I cheat and put the ingredients into a small jar and shake it like mad to emulsify it, but you can be a proper kitchen maven and use a bowl and whisk. I just like shaking it better. (I’m like James Bond–I like it shaken, not stirred. Actually, I hate martinis, but I digress.)

When the vinaigrette is shaken or whisked, however you like it–put your beets in a bowl and pour the dressing on and toss. That’s it–simple.

You can serve them warm, at room temperature or cold. You can serve them as they are or do what I did and plop them on top of a salad made of mixed greens, purple carrots, yellow carrots, red radishes, pepitas and chevre. If you do it on a salad, make a little extra dressing to pour over the salad as well.

Oh, and the vinaigrette–I made mine with about two tablespoons of freshly chopped Genovese basil leaves–though lemon basil leaves would rock too–local wildflower honey, a pinch of salt, a pinch of Aleppo pepper, Meyer lemon infused olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice. This combination is very fresh and somewhat floral in flavor which complements the sweetness of the beets perfectly without making them sour or biting in any way. (If you don’t have lemon infused olive oil, you can infuse lemon zest in your own olive oil overnight and then use it. It won’t taste Meyer lemony–unless you use a Meyer lemon–but it will taste plenty lemony and good.)

I’m thinking of adding some thin red onion slices that have been soaked in water for an hour, then drained and rinsed to the beets when they are being tossed with the dressing next time. I think that they will add a lovely crunch and tang without the overpowering onion taste that unsoaked onions have. And, instead of basil for that version, I think I might use cilantro in the dressing…..we’ll see. Let me know if you come up with any variations.

Roasted Beets With Basil Honey Lemon Vinaigrette
Ingredients:

Enough beets roasted, peeled and sliced as instructed above to make 2 cups sliced beets
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves
1 1/2 tablespoons wildflower honey (or to taste, depending on the acidity of your lemon juice)
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
3/4 cup Meyer lemon or plain extra virgin olive oil
pinch of salt and Aleppo (or black) pepper, or to taste

Method:

Whisk together all the ingredients for the vinaigrette, or be lazy like me and put them all into a jar and shake vigorously, until the dressing emulsifies into a thin yellow liquid. Taste for seasoning and flavor balance and adjust as needed.

Pour over the beets and toss well. Serve warm, at room temperature or cold. Serve over a salad or as is–but do serve it, as it is wonderful.

Zak Cooks Dinner: Bistecca alla Fiorentina

Warning!

If you are a vegetarian, please don’t read this post. It involves the cooking of and devouring of amazingly delicious red meat. There is fire, smoke and meat juice involved. I doubt you’d much appreciate it. (But, for what it’s worth, I served the steak with a huge salad filled with spring veggies and grilled asparagus–look for these vegetarian recipes (and more) coming up soon!

Zak (my husband, for those joining us late) SWEARS to me that he cannot cook. He is the one student I couldn’t teach–mostly because he is afraid of my super-sharp kitchen knives and I wasn’t as patient with him as I should have been. I thought it was a good idea to teach him while we cooked dinner together. However, I didn’t take into account that trying to teach someone to cook while we were both hungry is a VERY BAD IDEA. So, we gave up on lessons long ago.

But, he did teach himself how to bake great bread, and he baked it for a while before finally wandering away from it. And his scrambled eggs are usually better than mine–he’s more patient and cooks them on a lower heat than I do.

But even so, Zak has it in his head that he can’t really cook.

BUT, he sure can throw down and grill up a dinner just as sweet as you please.

I love to cook on a grill, but Zak loves it even better than I do (I think it’s because he has to tend the fire–we use wood or hardwood charcoal here, so it’s a long process–and whilst tending, he gets to drink margaritas and play guitar out on the deck), so I let him have at it. AND, not only do I “let him” cook on the grill, I downright encourage it, by giving him grilling cookbooks (Our favorites are both written by chef and expert at setting things on fire–Steve Raichlen–The Barbeque Bible and How to Grill), special utensils, and tools like grill gloves to protect him from the intense heat he prefers to cook with.

So, last night, since the weather was supposed to remain sunny and warm, he decided we needed to grill out. I had a pair of amazingly marbled 1″ thick rib eyes that were just cut for me on Tuesday at Bluescreek Farm Meats in Columbus, and he wanted to do something different with them. Of his own volition, Zak went into the kitchen, plucked Raichlen’s How to Grill up off the shelf, and began to perusing.

It didn’t take him long before he had his heart settled on Raichlen’s version of the classic Tuscan grilled porterhouse recipe: Bistecca alla Fiorentina. Note, it is supposed to be made from a porterhouse steak, and all we had were rib eyes, but you know–after reading the recipe together, we reckoned it couldn’t taste bad with a rib eye, and if we liked it (which we knew we would, mind you), we could, at a later date, purchase a porterhouse and make it again. Because, you know, eating good beef grilled on a wood fire then rubbed with herbs and garlic and doused in fragrant extra virgin olive oil would be a horrible hardship that we knew we would have to struggle to survive.

But we were willing to do it all, in the name of culinary exploration.

Now, before I give the recipes, I have to fess up to doing all of the prep work for Zak. He still is wary around my knives, so it’s just easier if I cut for him. And mincing–oy. That’s just too close to the knife blade for his comfort, so I took on the job of mincing the garlic and fresh rosemary leaves (out of our garden!). But that doesn’t matter–Zak did the hot part of the cooking–and it turned out divine.

Our assumptions were correct–a rib eye cooked on a wood fire and doused with super-delicious olive oil is never going to bad. I mean, so long as you don’t set the piece of cow on fire and turn it into a little charcoal briquet/cremated cow corpse bit, it simply cannot taste bad. Or, unless you are a vegetarian or you don’t eat beef or don’t like it or something. Then it would be bad, but only subjectively.

Objectively speaking, it was bound to be delicious. And it was.

Now, I have to admit that Bistecca alla Fiorentina is pretty much over-the-top rich. It’s made with a rich cut of beef, which is minimally seasoned with salt and pepper before being grilled over a hot hardwood fire. Then, after it is cooked, you lay it into a casserole dish into which you have scattered minced garlic, minced fresh rosemary and six lightly bruised fresh sage leaves. While the searingly hot meat is making the acquaintance of the sundry gathered aromatics, you then pour half a cup of the best, most fragrant olive oil you possess over the meat and then turn it over and let it rest for a few minutes.

Magic happens in those few minutes. The meat juices seep into the olive oil marinade and the heat of the steak helps release the fragrances and flavors of the aromatics, which seep into the oil and onto the surface of the meat. It’s just heavenly.

In Tuscany, traditionally bistecca is made with porterhouses cut from the famous and ancient breed–the Chianina cattle, which are beautiful giant bovines noted for their lean, tender, flavorful meat. (And when I say giant, I mean it–take a glance at some photos of them next to humans. Those suckers are enormous. And beautiful, especially the silver ones and white ones…..)

There used to be a farmer near Logan, Ohio who raised Chianina,but I don’t know if they still are. If not, David and Cheryl of Bluescreek Farm raise Belgian Blue cattle, which while they are not as gigantic as the Tuscan Chianinas, they are also produce flavorful, superb, lean cuts of delicious beef. I don’t have any trouble at all substituting Bluescreek’s beef for the traditional breed used in Tuscany.

But yeah, Chianina or not, porterhouse or rib-eye, this is one rich dish. I suggest serving it rarely, as a treat, and then, serving it with lots of vegetables. I made a roasted beet, mixed lettuce, spinach, carrot and radish salad dressed with a very light basil, honey and lemon vinaigrette as well as a big old pile of grilled asparagus. (Which Zak also cooked. He’s getting good, I tell you!) We didn’t bother with anything starchy. We just ate lots of meat and vegetables. Maybe the amount of vegetables we ate offset the amazing meat in our diet karma or something. Probably not, but I had to try!

And speaking of vegetables, meat-juice, garlic and herb infused olive oil, makes a great dip for crudite. We discovered that when Kat took to dipping her raw purple carrots in the oil and gobbling her little rooty bits even faster than normal. (Which is running-rabbit fast, by the way. My girl loves her carrots. Especially if they are purple.)

So, finally, here’s the recipe, adapted from Raichlin’s, though I will say that the only true adaptation was that we switched out porterhouse for rib eyes and used hickory wood to cook them instead of oak, simply because that’s what we had. Other than that, the techniques and all are Raichlen’s. (And may I say, if you want one or two grilling handbooks, either or both of the titles I mentioned above are perfect.

So, without further ado, here’s Chez Zak and Barb’s version of bistecca.

Ingredients:

2 1″ thick rib eye steaks (buy the best quality of meat you can afford, grass fed will taste the best)
1 small cube of beef fat (optional)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 cloves of fresh garlic, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary leaves
6 whole fresh sage leaves, lightly bruised between your fingers
1/2 cup of cold pressed extra virgin olive oil–the best you have

Method:

Set up your charcoal grill for direct grilling using hardwood chunks. We used hickory, because that is what we had. If you do not know how to do this and want to learn, look at Raichlen’s quick and dirty explanation of how it works here. His books have lots more information and hold your hand step by step, but those few paragraphs hold the gist of how its done.

If you want to just use your charcoal grill the way you always do, go for it. If you must, use a gas grill, but in either of these cases, use some soaked hardwood chips to make smoke–the smoky flavor is part of what makes this recipe so special.

Season both sides of the steaks with salt and freshly ground pepper. When you are ready to slap the meat on the grill, brush off your grill grate and oil it. (Or, if you have the optional chunk of beef fat, grab that with tongs and use that in place of an oil soaked paper towel to oil you grates. Just rub the fat all over it until the fat melts onto the grate and the air smells divine.)

Plop the steaks down on the hot grate at a 45 degree angle to the bars on the grate. Grill until cooked to taste. (For rare, that is about seven to ten minutes per side–or to about 125 degrees F on your meat thermometer. Rotate the steaks about 3 minutes into the cooking process to make pretty grill marks in a diagonal crosshatch pattern.

While the steak is minding itself for a few minutes on the grill, sprinkle the garlic, rosemary and sage leaves all over the bottom of a shallow gratin or baking dish that is big enough to hold the meat.

When the steaks are done, pluck it from the flames, and lay those beauties right down on top of the aromatics. Turn them over a couple of times to get both sides good and coated with the wee fragrant bits. Then, pour the oil slowly over the meat. Turn the meat again a couple of times, letting it marinate for 3 to 5 minutes or so while it’s resting.

When you are ready to serve the steaks, remove them and place them on serving plates, then using a spoon, drizzle some of the meaty-juicy-delicious oil over the tops of each one.

Dig in and enjoy. Just remember, food like this, amazingly, gracefully divine as it is, should only be eaten every now and again. To paraphrase Captain Kirk: “Too much of anything, even bistecca, is not necessarily a good thing.”

The Locavore’s Bookshelf: Public Produce

As a landscape architect and city planner, Darrin Nordahl is in a unique position in regards to understanding and articulating the feasibility of urban agriculture in modern US cities. Unlike many authors, such as Micheal Pollan, Nordahl has first-hand experience with designing public landscapes in urban environments, and so he can see the viewpoints of those who favor of adding edible plants to urban landscapes and those who oppose the idea.

All of these facts work in Nordahl’s favor as he wrote Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture. In it, he outlines the hows and whys of changing our public policies regarding food in the urban landscape. He makes a cogent argument that municipalities can and should take the lead in feeding the public through other means than the usual community garden. He suggests that cities can plant fruit and nut trees in public venues such as parks or city plazas. He tells stories of unused parking lots being turned into community gardens staffed by public employees where the food is available to everyone and anyone. He suggests, again, with straight reasoning behind his thoughts, that the traditional community garden plan is not sufficient to feed those in need, and that it is not only up to individuals or private charities to take up the slack, but that governments can and should step up and lead the way into a new way of integrating food into our daily lives in the 21st century and beyond.

I loved the ways in which Nordahl suggests to incorporate food into many different types of public venues, and I loved his arguments against the usual naysayers who declare that food plants have no business in the public view because they are unattractive and messy.

What I found lacking in the book, though, was a certain eloquence–while it is obvious to me that Nordahl is passionate about the subject and is more than knowledgeable, his writing style is a bit dry and lackluster. The stories he tells are factually interesting, but are told in such a way that they are bloodless and cold. There is a lack of human warmth in the book that made it very hard for me to read–which is odd because I can usually devour books of this type in days.

This book, though it is a mere 149 pages, took me over two weeks to read.

Compare that to the 450 pages in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which I read in less than a week.

But be that as it may, while the book is not an entertaining read that is easy to tear through, it has a worthy message and is filled with useful informatin, especially for people who are interested in helping alleviate the food inequity in our country.

And for that, it is quite worth slogging through the less than sparkling prose.