A few of my good friends are into yogurt/cheese making and have been getting me pretty excited about it. It's so nice when I can talk to friends about this stuff—not just look on-line/read books and then bend Pete's ear about it (he's so great at listening, but you know, I am talking about making cheese here). I started making yogurt right after Sadie was born about 5 years ago, but eventually stopped because I wasn't thrilled with it. This was back when I wasn't using whole milk and I think that had a lot to do with why I didn't love the result. Milk and cheese seem to be in my head again (making yogurt this week). I made some paneer cheese for the first time the other night and it was like some wonderful magic trick. Or science experiment. I had made yogurt cheese before, just straining yogurt, which is thrilling in itself (so creamy, thick and wonderful) but that's it. I got my recipe from this amazing book Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian
I used an organic low-heat pasteurized non-homogenized whole milk (this was Straus milk for all you local folks, I need to try it with Noris milk) which was convenient because that's what I had on hand and it made a lovely cheese. I wouldn't make it with anything else (unless I got my hands on some good raw milk) so I can't vouch for this recipe if you use a normal low fat supermarket milk. Along with the milk, all you need is vinegar.
Bring 4 cups of milk to a boil then add 2-3 tablespoons vinegar and stir. The whey separates immediately, it's pretty cool. Then strain through a cloth (with a colander underneath) you get the curds. A cheese making friend reminded me to keep the whey to add to soups, etc, 'cause there's good stuff in there.
Twist up the cloth, press with a cutting board on top (this was all in the sink) and after 3 minutes it becomes a solid. Well, a soft solid, similar to a tofu block. Here it is trimmed up pretty. I tossed it cubed up in a curry along with green peas and had a party in my mouth.
So, I love this. I love paneer and had a hard time finding it, I never realized how easy it is to make and how good it is fresh. The only thing is 4 cups of milk is a lot to use for anything makes very little cheese, like this piece here is not a whole lot bigger than a business card (with some scraps on the side). It also needs to be eaten right away I think, which is no big deal because the whole process took about 7 minutes. So, it's wonderful, but uses up a lot of milk. I am getting a cheese book out of the library soon. Thanks to holly for the tip in my comments to this cheesemaking site, very cool resource.
