After watching the Indian Food Made Easy series on BBC2, hosted by Anjum Anand I was feeling rather inspired and decided to try making my own Paneer! I asked my friend Anshu for some advice and here are the results …
For the Paneer, you need 2 liters of milk (I decided to try one with Organic Full Cream cows milk and one with Soya milk.) You will also need a souring agent such as natural live yogurt or lemon juice.
Bring the milk to simmer in a heavy bottomed saucepan, as the milk starts to rise add the souring agent. I used approx 300 ml of natural yogurt in the cow’s milk paneer and the juice of 5 lemons in the soya milk paneer. I wanted to keep the soya one strictly vegan.
You will need to keep stirring the milk until the whey/soy separate.
Remove from the heat and pour into muslin, I did this into a colander so the water could drain easily. Allow this to cool for a few minutes and then gently squeeze out the remaining liquid, tie the muslin and weight it down with another pan or a bread board and leave for about 30 minutes.
Then remove from the muslin, slice and season. I used Himalayan rock salt and chilli powder on mine and then placed them in a dry pan to brown the edges before serving.
Layer in your salads add the paneer, you will see that I cut mine into small cubes, add a dollop of humus and tuck in!
PS: The carrots are from my garden by the way, my first ever yield!
