Paneer, Week 3

What a week for the cheese blog! Check out the new additions on the right.  I added a world map of cheeses that highlights the regions of the world where my cheeses originate.  Also, I've begun a table to try to quantify the results of each week of cheese.  The long-awaited bracket o' cheese is in the works.

I think the main follow-up question to last week's entry-- "What is in your coffee cup?! What IS your coffee cup?? ...atigulosity??" The answer is....meticulousity. I got that mug, along with "pococurante" and "logorrhea" from Starbucks a couple of years ago as promotional swanky mugs for "Akeelah and the Bee." I never saw the movie, but I am a huge word nerd.

I also got a few cheese suggestions-- Brebis,  Sfingi (with Ricotta), Chevre, Rembrandt (kind of Gouda)-- and requests for dinner or dessert cheese.  Lastly, a request for cheese origin came in!  When I said it had been a week for the cheese blog, I was not kidding!  

This week, we ventured to India.  After being tipped a recipe for Cashew Nut Biryani from the really neat mediterrasian.com, I remembered this recipe for Absolutely Perfect Palak Paneer.  I also had been wanting to make this Moroccan Lentil Soup...and decided to make an event of it!

I present you with... 

Paneer

Price: $5.703/lb

Smell Factor: Milky and plain.  The "wonderbread" of cheese smell.

Step one: Slice cheese.  This was easy to do, and absolutely not the first step.  The cheese fresh out of the package was great!  Here's the first photo of cheese I took.

Step two: Fry cheese.  This was fun.

Step Three: Avoid melting spatula in frying cheese. I can't emphasize this enough. It is not a good idea.  I was in a bit of blue-goo-cheese-shock, so the photo is a little sketch.

Step Four: Spinach. I just wanted to point out how messy this was. I used three pounds of frozen chopped spinach...for three people!  I drained the water out with a nuke-it-and-paper-towel-it process.  

Step Five: Eat. Here's the final product-- I took more in-process photos, but there were so many, I didn't want to dull down the blog.

Enjoy!

One final note: the dessert on the table was a "special" mix we got at the really neat Indian grocery store conveniently located in an industrial parkway near the apartment.  We played dessert roulette and tried all of them.  Here's my ranking, from "eh...maybe I could eat this" to "pass the naan, I don't want to ever taste this again" to "excuse me while I go lick some concrete to see if my tongue can still taste."

"Special" is right.

I almost forgot-- new cheese ranking: Manchego>Paneer>Comte!