Cheese Gromit Cheese!

I think that people close to me, as well as not close to me, know that I love India Quality restaurant in Kenmore. I often get IQ for lunch when I'm working at Jean Therapy. I always order the came thing. I think I don't get anything different because I've tried to deviate before and, while it was good, it wasn't exactly what I really wanted. I always get the saag paneer. I love the taste of curry with the texture of the creamy spinach/greens and the chewy, sorta spongey, cheese! It's a wonderful dish full of comfort and complexity for me.

So when I saw a recipe on-line a while back for making paneer cheese at home, I cut and paste the recipe to an email, sent it to myself and archived it. What I cut and pasted is below this post. I'm sooo sorry to the blog where I found the recipe because I can't for the life of me remember where I got it.

In any event, it's a very simple recipe and I was kinda excited to be able to say, "I made my own homemade cheese". So how did I do? Well, for such an easy recipe, I managed to mess it up. A couple of suggestions, so you can learn from my mistakes:

1.) Use a cheesecloth and not a kitchen towel.
2.) Wait until the curds have cooled a bit to dump them into the cheesecloth in the colander.
3.) Wait until the curds have really cooled off to start squeezing out the liquid. E and I were so excited over making cheese that right after dumping the hot curds into the kitchen towel in the colander, she started squeezing out the liquid. This resulted in most of the hot cheese sticking to my kitchen towel.
4.) Make the cheese ahead of the sag. This will give you time to really press it and get the liquid out before you attempt to fry it.

Will I make cheese again? Sure, but it won't be a staple in my kitchen that's for sure. I don't think I was born to become a cheese maker anytime soon. A cheese eater on the other hand, well, that's another story entirely! Also, the sag recipe I got off the Internet somewhere (again can't remember where) wasn't quite right. It called for yogurt and didn't have the creamy mouth feel I was use to. So if anyone has a fairly foolproof recipe for saag, please share!!!!

Basic Paneer

This comes from my oft-consulted copy of Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian.

You’ll need:

• 2 litres whole milk
• 3-4 tblsps white vinegar

You’ll also need:

• A large, heavy saucepan in which to boil the milk, plus a colander and tea-towel for straining.

The Steps:

• Place your colander in the sink and line with a clean tea-towel or few layers of muslin.
• Put the milk in a large heavy saucepan over a medium-high heat.
• Stir the milk occasionally while it’s heating, otherwise you’re likely to end up with burnt milk residue on the base of the pot (at least that’s what happens to me!)
• When the milk is just beginning to boil, turn the heat to low and add 3 tblsps of vinegar. The milk should curdle and separate into solid white curds and a thin greenish liquid, the whey.
• The curdling should start happening right after the vinegar is added. If it doesn’t, add another tblsp of vinegar.
• Once the milk is separated (which won’t take long, maybe a minute or so) remove from the heat and pour the contents into your lined colander. Most of the whey will drain out.
• Now, you can either just let the curds sit and drain for 5-10 minutes and use them as soft curds (as you might use ricotta) or you can press them into a solid patty.
• To press into a patty, gather up the ends of the tea-towel, twist and squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
• Then take your little cloth bundle, flatten it into your desired patty shape and leave the top firmly twisted. Sit it on a board in the sink and top with another board and weight it down for about 3-4 minutes. The weight (a heavy pot, say, or a combination of pots) should weigh at least 2.25kg.
• The paneer is now ready. It can be sliced and fried or cut into cubes and used in any number of Indian recipes.

The Variations:

• Having read Jenni’s post on the world of dairy infusion, I thought, hey, ho, I could add something into the milk to impart some flavour while it boils. So far I have tried adding a piece of cinnamon stick and ended up with lovely, mildly cinnamon-flavoured curds. There are lots of other things you could try adding, like bay leaves, cloves or other whole spices, depending on how you want the curds to taste.
• If you’re going to press the paneer, you can mix herbs or spices into the curds just before you press them. For Indian dishes I like to add 1 tsp of toasted cumin seeds and a couple of twists of black pepper to the paneer but you can choose the flavouring to suit whatever dish you’re making.

The Results:

• Approx. 250g of paneer

India Quality finally learned to look me in the eye and it was delicious.

About a year ago I stopped going to India Quality around the corner from one of my shops. Actually I stopped going to quite a few places around the store. Ankara, couldn't deal with the grumpy 'ttude and they increased the price on my usual sandwich even though I had been getting the same sandwich every week and the price on the board was less as well. Petite Robert, an employee from that place bragged and announced that she had gone to an industry party in pants she bought at the shop and wanted to return them after she had worn them out to an event.

India Quality was a place I stopped going to because of what happened to me the last two times I went. Both times it was late in the afternoon (I don't eat lunch until around 3pm on most days) and all the servers tend to congregate by the bar where one picks up his/her take out orders. In I walk and as I wait for my change, I feel three sets of eyes on my chest. I'm wearing a tank top, sure but it's certainly not that skimpy and I'm less than an A cup. It skeeved me out and I quickly dashed out with my food. When it happened a second time, I decided I couldn't go back. Even standing there waiting for the 3 minutes to get my lunch and change is kinda agonizing when your chest is gawked out.

And so India Quality's fate was decided. I wasn't going back. But this past rainy Wednesday, the store was fairly quiet and I was in need of something delicious but I wanted something with heat as well. I wanted comfort and spice. Hmm....the options were limited for sure. I decided that since a year had passed since Chestgate 2007, I should give India Quality another shot. The food there is so damn tasty. They're known for having great Indian food. Their goat dishes are fantastic and their vindaloo is plenty hot enough for the likes of me. I went ahead and placed my order for chicken curry with a side of raita. What's a little sexually inappropriate behavior when there is hot and well seasoned curry to be had?

I made my way over and found the place to be very busy even late in the lunch service. There wasn't the usual gaggle of servers at the bar. Infact, the man behind the bar was an older gentleman and he smiled and looked me IN THE EYES when I spoke to him. I was shocked and didn't want to press my luck too much. I tried to get in and out as quickly as possible, shouting over my shoulder "have a lovely day, thank so much, bye" before I left. Afterall, I wanted to try and be polite still.

Once at the store with my lunch, I unpacked everything. The picture on the post of this post (minus the limeade big gulp) is from my lunch special! What I love is that they are thoughtful enough to put a disposable plate into the sturdy white lunch bag. And the plate is pretty darn sturdy too. I got a huge container of rice...white basmati mixed with saffroned basmati and tiny specks of fennel seeds too. And the chicken curry is a very good sized portion too. I asked for it hot and it was the perfect amount of heat for me. My nose was good and runny by the end of my meal and that's a good sign to me. The chicken was tender and moist and there were huge chunks of it in the container. The meal comes with complimentary little papadam crackers. India Quality has nice ones. They don't skimp on the course ground pepper baked into the crisp wafers.

The meal was perfect and exactly what I wanted. By the end I was a bit stuffed and probably should have saved some of it for a snack for later but it was all just too good. It made me want to go back again for dinner sometime soon and get the lamb vindaloo and goat dishes. It made me really happy to know that perhaps they went thru sexual harassment training or that there is at least one person there not fixated on boobs, because it's nice to have a fantastic Indian restaurant back on my food roster.