Fromage Free Press

Feta Brines; Paneer Shines

Bay View, Wis.– You know that gallon-sized jar of brine and cheese pictured in my last post?  I fished out a hunk to test the cheese at the 10 day point.  It’s standing up just fine.  Crumbly and dry on the inside.  Salty on the outside.  After a jolt of kosher salt on your tongue, there’s funky feta flavor behind there.  Strange thing though — it’s kinda chlorine-y.  I wonder why this is.  Perhaps filtered spring water would be better than Milwaukee’s best tap water.  Perhaps I should wait a full month before tasting again.  I’ve reached the upper threshold of my hobbyist cheese making resources so I have no definitive answer.  I wonder if I could get ahold of Sid at Carr Valley.  Sigh.  We’ll have to sit and wait for my primary research experiment to run its course in my basement fridge.

Paneer cheese.  Make it at home and you will be loved by all — at least for your cooking.  It happens so quickly, I forget to photograph the process and it’s eaten before I get my camera to document it in prepared dishes.  Here’s how to make it, sans photographs.

Obtain one gallon of whole milk.  In a stock pot on the stove top, heat the milk to just shy of 185 degrees.  Dump in about a quarter cup of white vinegar and you’ll see the curd start to separate right away.  Keep the temperature steady for 5-10 minutes while stirring occasionally.  You’ll see the whey get thinner, more watery and turn pale green as more proteins coagulate.  You’ll notice the small curds clumping up nicely in a slotted spoon.  Once you’ve got good separation of curds and whey, turn off the heat, line a big colander with cheesecloth (not the cloth you use to make sachets for mulled cider, honest fine weave cheesecloth), pour the contents of the stock pot through the cheesecloth (reserve  the whey if you want — otherwise, pour down the drain).   Tie up the corners of the cloth and hang up to drain for a few hours or overnight in a cool place.  Unwrap from cheesecloth and badda bing, you’ve got paneer.  You could shape it into a block with right angles at this point too.  I’m not that particular, so I cut it into cubes and serve in staple Indian dishes like Palak Paneer.  Or with pasta and herbs and olive oil.

Cast Iron Carnage

Burns-Boose Kitchen, Wis.– In tangential feta news, the pot rack that held up my cheesecloth-wrapped feta fell down while we were away for the weekend.  We showed up with out-of-town pals in tow to find our freshly-cleaned kitchen floor covered in bits of safety glass from a shattered pot lid.  Fortunately for us,  we had the sweetest houseguests of all time on our side, as they proceeded to help sweep up the mess before we brought in luggage.   I mean, hands and knees with dustpan sweeping.  So I’m not hyperbolizing when I say “of all time.”  Anyhow, the first thing that came to mind when I saw the carnage?  Not frustration over the gouges in our kitchen wall, but a grateful phew that the wreckage didn’t ruin a batch of cheese.  So new cheese draining area needed.  Preferrably one that doesn’t share space with cast iron skillets.