Cooking progress...
Jun. 26th, 2008 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpGalina and I were talking on the phone the other day and she was noting how hungry she was and how there wasn't anything to eat in the house, which touches on a pet theory of mine, to wit:
Whenever I've been of the opinion that "there's nothing to eat," a little low-level observation will uncover enough chow to feed a division of Chinese infantry. (Okay, a very small division of said infantry.) Invariably, though, it'll be food that requires effort to cook (rice, beans) and a little imagination to integrate (hearts of palm, smoked oysters).
In the course of my conversation with Galina, she mentioned that - among other things - yes, she had found the package of palak paneer (an Indian dish of creamed spinach and cheese), but that it was not to her liking.
So how, exactly, I managed to stumble across a recipe for paneer (the cheese) isn't exactly clear to me, but it was so utterly simple that I gave it a try last night.
The basic idea is to take whole milk and cause the curds to separate from the whey, and then rinse, squeeze, and compress the curds. I did this with a little more than a liter of whole milk yesterday, and am now the proud owner of a block of paneer that I intend to mix with some cooked spinach later with dinner (regrettably, I haven't either the fenugreek leaves or garam masala powder that the full-on recipe calls for, so I'll have to make do).
More news after the official taste test.
Cheers...
Whenever I've been of the opinion that "there's nothing to eat," a little low-level observation will uncover enough chow to feed a division of Chinese infantry. (Okay, a very small division of said infantry.) Invariably, though, it'll be food that requires effort to cook (rice, beans) and a little imagination to integrate (hearts of palm, smoked oysters).
In the course of my conversation with Galina, she mentioned that - among other things - yes, she had found the package of palak paneer (an Indian dish of creamed spinach and cheese), but that it was not to her liking.
So how, exactly, I managed to stumble across a recipe for paneer (the cheese) isn't exactly clear to me, but it was so utterly simple that I gave it a try last night.
The basic idea is to take whole milk and cause the curds to separate from the whey, and then rinse, squeeze, and compress the curds. I did this with a little more than a liter of whole milk yesterday, and am now the proud owner of a block of paneer that I intend to mix with some cooked spinach later with dinner (regrettably, I haven't either the fenugreek leaves or garam masala powder that the full-on recipe calls for, so I'll have to make do).
More news after the official taste test.
Cheers...
