Quilt and Cheese

Quilts and Cheese!  A strange combination, but it is what it is.

Inspired by Jenny Doan's Half-square triangle quilt.

 Ignore the wrinklies, please.  This is the flimsy on top of my bed, and it is not smoothed out.  Any real wonkiness will be quilted and crinkled out.  Yay, washing and drying quilts and getting quilty crinklies!

I liked doing this very much, but had trouble with my seams not nesting in certain spots.  Some of them were going in the same direction.  I have to work on my pressing. 

That's the quilt part of this post.  Here is the cheese part.

Home made ricotta cheese.  A soft, spreadable, creamy white cheese.  (Ignore the parts that look yellow.  It's my photography.  The real cheese is creamy white color).

I've been making paneer, a simple Indian cheese for decades.  Mindlessly easy to make.  Milk with lemon juice as a coagulant.  The other day I found  One-Hour Cheese: Ricotta, Mozzarella, Chèvre, Paneer--Even Burrata. Fresh and Simple Cheeses You Can Make in an Hour or Less! at the library and checked it out.  Holey Moley!  What a book.  Incredible photographs describing every step of making simple cheeses at home.  Not the kind that need to ripen, just the stuff you make and eat within an hour.  

So yesterday I tried a ricotta.  It looks crumbly, but isn't, even after being refrigerated for 18 hours.  It is creamy, spreads well, and is so delicious, I don't have the words to describe it.  The best soft cheese going.

I used lemon juice as my coagulant, but the process is different from making paneer, and I think that changes how the cheese comes out.

In paneer, you bring your milk to a boil.  Shut off the heat, and add in lemon juice.  You can substitute vinegar or lime juice, or even yogurt (which gives a lot of milk solids).  Strain it and let the whey drain off.  And there you have it:  a lovely crumbly cheese which you can then press to make nice firm shapes.

In the ricotta, you add the lemon juice to the milk before cooking it, and then you have a slow cook until it hits 190 degrees.  The curds form much slower than in paneer.  Drain, etc, etc.  It's an awesome cheese.  

I used 2 % milk.  Didn't want all the butterfat of whole milk, but wanted a certain creaminess that skim milk doesn't give.  A total of 6 cups of milk produced about 2 oz of cheese.  

I can see me experimenting with this cheese.  How about putting in a cheesecloth bag of rosemary, simmering it along in the cooking process, then removing it, this giving the cheese that gorgeous rosemary flavor.  Mmmm.  Yummy.

So that's it:  a quilt and a cheese.  Not half bad.

The Yarnarian has a recipe for you.

Have you ever eaten paneer? Paneer is a simple, fresh cheese that tastes wonderful. If you like Indian food, you will have eaten it. No, it's not spicy at all, just plain cheese, kind of like farmer cheese only much much better! I first saw a recipe for it many many years ago in the NY Times Sunday magazine section, and was totally intrigued. I've made it on and off, but haven't done it in over 10 years.

The other day, I had a yen for it, and made it again. Wow, it's every bit as good as I remember.

Here's what you need:

1/2 gal. milk. I use 2% because I like the richer taste, but have used skim and 1% also, and it's just fine. If we weren't watching our cholesterol, I'd make it using whole milk or even half and half.

1/4 cup white vinegar or fresh lemon juice. This is your souring agent. The paneer will not taste like vinegar at all.

Line a colander with good paper towels or a few layers of cheesecloth. You want to be able to drain the paneer without losing the curds. Set the colander either into the sink or on top of a bowl.

Bring milk to a boil in a large pot. It helps in clean-up time to spray the pot with cooking spray or even brushing the bottom and sides with canola oil. Watch it carefully when it looks like it's going to boil. It happens very quickly and believe me, you don't want to clean that mess up.

When it comes to a boil, turn off heat and pour in the vinegar or lemon juice. Almost immediately lovely white curds will appear, and the liquid left will become a pale greenish color. That's the whey, as in curds and whey.

Gently scoop the curds using a large slotted spoon, or one of the large Chinese mesh spoons into the colander. You'll see the bit of liquid draining away, and what you have left is pure paneer. You can top it with a couple of paper towels and then put a heavy weight on it to help it drain. You can also dump the entire thing into your colander, but then it takes forever and ever to drain. Trust me, the slotted spoon is your friend.

Try to shape the paneer into a block. When it's pretty much drained (You may have to change the paper towels or cheese cloth a couple of times), cut it up into little pieces, put into a plastic bag and refrigerate it. You can also freeze it. There, you have a protein-rich, tasty addition to any recipe you make.

Paneer fun: 1. I tend to nibble on the curds as they get scooped. They're mighty hot but cool quickly and they are beyond wonderful. Warning: this stuff is addictive! You can easily eat half of it at this point. the curds practically melt in your mouth. No, it doesn't taste sour. In fact it has a slightly sweet taste.

2. Try using a cup of plain yogurt as your souring agent. It will take a lot longer to drain, but you'll get the best paneer going, and lots more of it since yogurt is a milk product. If it's taking too long to form into curds, add a tablespoon or so of vinegar.

3. You can season the milk as it is heating up. So, let's say you want to use it in an Italian recipe, season the milk with herbs that would live with tomato sauce. The paneer will be subtle, but tasty.

4 When it's done and you've cut it up, pat very dry, and fry it. It will form a lovely crust. You can refrigerate it or freeze it also in this form.

5. It doesn't melt into your sauces; it stays whole, which is a nice addition.

6. Give it to a fussy eating kid. Don't tell the kid that it's paneer. Make up a name like milk squares or such. It's protein and calcium rich and you want to fool that fussy eater into trying it.

All this verbiage for a mindlessly simple recipe. Do try it, and if you have any variations, let me know, and I'll post them.

Knitting chat: Who's going to Sock Summit? Not me, obviously. After all the hoopla about it, I am so curious as to how it goes. There has been a bit of chat on the Ravelry forums about organizing a Lace Summit. Boy would I love to go to that one. Not that anything is in process; people are just starting to noodle around with the idea.

Henya - I made some today. Flavored the milk with garlic and rosemary, and I added it to a sauce I made. mmmm. so tasty!

itsJUSTme-wendy - I don't know. I've never made cottage cheese and I don't much like it. This has a sweetness to it, not powerfully sweet, just a hint of it. You can use tofu instead, but tofu to me has very little taste, whereas paneer is very tasty.