Easy Cheesy: Cracked Pepper Saffron Paneer

Wanna impress your friends, but don't have a lot of time or talent?

Tired of looking like a hopeless putz.

Sick of jerkoff bloggers giving you a hard time when all you're trying to do is read the fucking blog?

Why not do something about it, eh?

Why not make your own cheese?

Maybe Indian cheese...

Paneer.

Yeah, that'll impress your friends.

"What?" they'll say, "You made your own cheese?!? Holy fuck!"

Making cheese takes time and effort; this is a fact. Well, it's mostly true.

But making paneer is pretty fucking simple.

Paneer, or panir, is an unripened Indian cheese. It has a firm texture and the very cool property of not melting when you fry it.

Pretty rad, right?

It also has the property of having essentially no flavour, which is fine for most of its usual applications. If you've had Indian food you know that flavour needn't be added via cheese.

I, however, see no reason why a boring tradition can't be livened up with a bit of flavour, so I offer up my super simple recipe for Cracked Pepper Saffron Paneer.

Here's what you're gonna need:

1. A litre of milk - use whole fat milk. Low fat milk is stupid and it doesn't fucking work. If you're concerned about your weight, don't eat fucking cheese. If you're going to eat cheese, eat cheese, not dairy-scented water loaf.

2. 62.5ml of lemon or lime juice - yes, that is a bullshit measurement. I don't measure for shit. I'm just guessing that the juice of one lime is about that much, or the juice of half a regular-sized North American lemon.

3. A smidge of salt - about half a teaspoon or so.

4. Saffron. A thing or two about saffron: saffron is the world's most expensive spice, and by a considerable margin. So, feel free to leave it out or to substitute another flavour that you enjoy. The great thing about paneer is that it will soak up whatever flavour you stick in it. That being said, there are some things to consider when selecting and using saffron. Very rarely do I buy the fancy-pants saffron; you know, the kind that looks like red-headed orphan pubes. My local specialty shop carries a variety called American Saffron. Near as I can tell, it is machine-harvested whereas the good stuff is harvested by hand. Oh  yeah, saffron is the stigma of the crocus flower, so you can imagine the difficulty in hand-harvesting. The American stuff isn't as flavourful, but it is super cheap. One can get all the colour and most of the flavour of proper saffron for much less money but one needs to use about 5 times more - the cost is infinitesimally less. However, if you are using the good stuff, try to select only the red-orange strands as the yellow ones tend to be slightly bitter - you will not see any yellow in the best saffron.

5. Fresh-cracked black pepper. Don't use the pre-ground stuff. If you have that shit in your house you should throw it out. It's crap. If you don't have a pepper mill, go buy one - it's worth it.

6. Fresh thyme. A sprig'll do ya. You can pull the leaves off and put 'em right in with everything or you can throw in the whole sprig and take it out at the end. Whichever you prefer. Hell, you can say, "Fuck thyme" for all I care; it's your fucking cheese.

7. Cheesecloth

So here's the technique. Easy as balls:

Put your fatty milk in a fatty pot (heavy-bottomed saucepan) with the salt and spices and bring it gently to a boil. Yes, gently; don't just crank up the stove to High and fuck off on it. You have to keep an eye on it. Boiled-over milk is a huge pain in the ass, and it's amazing how quickly things can go from "a pot of warm milk" to "holy fuck there's milk everywhere!"

So keep an eye on it.

The second that the milk starts to boil, kill the heat and stir in the citrus. You'll notice that the milk curdles pretty much instantly.

Yay! It's working!

Let the whole mess sit for about 15 minutes or so. Then, you'll need some cheese cloth. You'll need at least 3 layers - I use 4. Fashion the cheesecloth over a sieve and put it in a bowl. When the cheese mixture is done sitting there doin' it's thing, dump it into the cheesecloth.

Now grab the whole deal and tie it up into a bag. Tie the bag to a cabinet handle or something and let the cheese hang, over a bowl, for several hours.

When ya figure it's done hanging out, or when your roommate or spouse tells you to take that fucking bag off the cupboard door, untie the satchel but keep the cheese covered. Stick it between a couple of plates or something similar and weight it on the top. Leave it in the fridge for a bunch of hours and it's done.

Woot.

Now I suppose one could just go ahead and eat it as is, but I'm not gonna.

I'm gonna fry mine up nice and golden-like, cut it into little bits and throw it into an Indian tomato soup.

Stay tuned for the soup...