Panir: the easiest cheese to make yourself

By Jo | Published: February 27, 2010

I blog here about my cheese-making escapades from time to time, but I don’t often post recipes.  That’s because making cheese, while not always difficult, usually requires special ingredients that are only available by mail-order.

There are, however, a few fresh cheeses that you can make at home using things you already have.  Yogurt cheese is perhaps the easiest, but it won’t be satisfying if you’re curious to see how milk transforms into cheese, because you make it simply by draining yogurt in a cheesecloth until it becomes thick and spreadable.

palak_panir

But panir (or paneer) is dead easy, and gives you the magic of watching curds form out of milk.  It was the first cheese I ever made from scratch, and I was entranced by how liquid milk could suddenly turn solid.  (That’s half the reason I keep making cheese, honestly: it’s magic.)  Panir is a fresh Indian cheese with a mild (but tasty) flavor, and you’ve probably encountered it in Indian restaurants.  It doesn’t melt.  You can make it hard or soft, but if you want to use it in Indian-style dishes, you’ll want it solid enough that you can cube it and it’ll hold together.

panir_curds

You already have everything you need to make panir.  The only “specialized” equipment is a finely-woven cheese cloth (called butter muslin), but you can use a clean, thin kitchen towel if need be.

It takes just a few minutes to make the curds, and a couple hours to drain.  Then you can use it to make palak panir, like I did, or any number of other dishes.  (No recipe for the palak panir, sadly, because I made it at the end of a very long day, and I don’t remember clearly how much I used of anything.  I’ll figure it out and share it with you, I promise.)

Note that you can double this recipe; mine made enough for 4 servings or more.  You can store it in the fridge for a few days, but not longer than that.

panir_curds_pressed

panir

Fresh Panir

  • 1/2 gallon of milk (whole or skim, but whole will give you a better yield and flavor)
  • 1/4 cup vinegar or lemon juice

In a large pot on the stove, bring the milk gently to a boil.  Stir occasionally so the bottom doesn’t burn.

Once it boils, remove the milk from the heat and drizzle the lemon or vinegar over the surface.  Stir well.  You should almost immediately see the milk separate, forming thick curds and thin, yellowish whey.

Let the curds sit about 5 minutes to let the vinegar do its work.  Put a colander in the sink and line it with your cheesecloth or towel, and carefully empty the pot into the colander (don’t lose any curds!).

Give the curds a good rinse with water to get rid of any lingering lemon or vinegar flavor.  Then form them into a patty, wrap it in the cheesecloth, and put a weight on top of it to help it drain.  A large can works great for this; so does a bowl of water.

Let it drain for a couple hours, then unwrap it and it’s ready to eat!  Or, you can store it in the fridge for a couple days.

Posted in cheese | 2 Comments

Lunch scene envy

By Jo | Published: February 21, 2010

This post from Herbivoraceous, praising the food cart scene in Portland and Seattle, makes me incredibly jealous.  We here in DC have nothing like what he describes: where Portland’s food carts are apparently ubiquitous, creative, delicious, and vegetarian-friendly, DC’s are mostly… just not there.

I know that the District used to have incredibly tight regulations about food carts, which they’ve recently started to relax, but even downtown there are few food carts, and most of them are dominated by tourist-friendly hot dogs and ice cream – nothing a hungry office worker would ever grab for lunch.  In the neighborhood of my office, outside DC proper, there’s almost nothing.

DC has plenty of good, local restaurants.  Why this lack of food carts?  I have to believe it’s because of regulations and obstacles, not the lack of inspired entrepreneurs.  If so, that’s a sad thing.

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The beginnings of a garden

By Jo | Published: February 14, 2010

Last weekend, between watching the snow pile deeper and shoveling said snow off my car, I spent some time ordering seeds for my garden.

I have big plans for my garden this year – maybe “grandiose” is a better word, since last year said garden didn’t produce much of anything.  I blame it on poor timing: we bought our new house at the end of May last year, moved in early June, then frantically bought seedlings and shoved them into pots on our patio that very same weekend.

Then it rained for the entire month of June – we were in our new house for 3 weeks or more before we even saw the sun.  So if our chard never reached full size, and our thyme withered away, and our tomato plants grew big and tall but never produced any tomatoes, I blame it on the weather.  That’s what I tell myself, so that I’ll have the will to try again this year.

We have practically no yard at our townhouse, but we do have a large patio that gets more sun than most of the rest of the houses, so we’ll be doing container gardening almost exclusively, packing as much into our limited space as we can.

I’m trying to focus on vegetables where we’ll get the most benefit from growing our own.  Growing my own food is, to me, an important part of eating locally and sustainably, and being connected to my food, but some crops are more important than others.  Peas, for example, need to be eaten as fresh as possible.  As soon as they’re picked, their sugar begins turning into starch, so even an hour after picking they’re already past their prime.  The peas you get at the farmers’ market aren’t bad, but even if they were picked that morning, it’s too long ago.  And the peas you find at the grocery store?  Forget it – at that point, you’re better off with frozen ones.

Tomatoes aren’t quite as dramatic, but there is still nothing like eating a tomato warm from the vine.  Then there are fragile, expensive foods like berries – they are easily bruised, and grow old quickly in the fridge.  I’d rather have them fresh from the plant, and available for snacking.  I miss snacking off the raspberry bushes that my parents had when I was a kid – I want some raspberries of my own.

Herbs are perhaps the most necessary: they’re expensive to buy, and when you do buy them, you get so much you can’t use it all up.  Only by cutting it off the plant as needed can you actually have a steady supply of fresh herbs.

So I ordered a whole bunch of seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange last week, and now that most of them (except the potatoes) have arrived, I’m eager to start them:

  • Three kinds of tomatoes (Eva Purple Ball, Hungarian Paste, and Zarnitsa)
  • Tomatillos (my new obsession, and they’re hard to find locally)
  • Dinosaur kale (which goes by many names, including Obama kale, at my local market – I’m not sure why)
  • Swiss chard
  • Sugar snap peas
  • Basil
  • Caribe potatoes (which will be a lovely shade of blue)

I’m hoping to plant a few more items than that – there are some seed swaps coming up, and I’m going to buy herbs and berries as seedlings – but that’s my beginning.

Buying seeds felt overwhelming, but now that I have them, it seems like the hard part really starts.  I don’t know much about starting seeds, including when to start them – all I know is “not yet,” and I hope to figure out the rest soon.  And it just gets more complicated from there: this seed needs to germinate in the dark, that one should be transplanted; this one should be heavily pruned, that one shouldn’t be pruned at all; this one wants plenty of nitrogen, that one will die with too much nitrogen but it needs plenty of phosphorus.

Confused yet?  Me too.  I’m hoping to figure it out as I go along.  I take comfort in the knowledge that all these fruits and veggies have been cultivated for centuries, often by people with access to far less information and fewer tools than I have – and the plants survived on their own with no help from humans for millenia before that.  It can’t be that hard, can it?

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Dried Mushrooms

By Jo | Published: February 7, 2010

Dried wild mushrooms are like a present that you get to open twice: when you cook with them, not only do you get to use one of the richest, most savory, most complex foods there is, you also get their broth, which is a treat to use now or later in whatever you like.

Plus, they look as pretty as they taste:

Dried Mushrooms

I found some dried porcini mushrooms at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago, early in January when otherwise there wasn’t much there.  I came home with a ziploc bag full, which I expect will last a while.  I love porcinis especially, because they have a very dark, meaty flavor, but chantrelles, morels, shiitakes, and others are all an equally good buy.

You can find dried wild mushrooms in most grocery stores, especially higher-end ones.  They are expensive – don’t look at the price per pound! – and they come in small bags, but when you’re cooking with them, a little goes a long way.  These dry, shriveled things pack a whole lot of flavor.

To use dried mushrooms, put them in a bowl and cover them with warm water.  Then just let them sit for about 15 minutes, until they’ve absorbed the water and become soft and squishy.  Then fish them out, chop them up, and add them to your cooking.  But save the liquid!  Carefully pour it off into another container (dirt and debris from the mushrooms will sometimes settle to the bottom of the liquid – don’t be grossed out, but don’t save those bits, either) and stick it in the fridge.

You can put dried mushrooms in lots of things – just about anywhere you’d use regular button mushrooms.  In fact, one of the best ways to use them is alongside button mushrooms, to enhance the flavor while the cheaper mushrooms provide most of the substance.  Try:

  • Add them to soup (porcinis make the best mushroom soup you’ll ever taste)
  • Putt them on pizza
  • Add them to stir fries (especially shiitakes)
  • Stir them into risotto
  • Put them into pasta sauce, or just serve them over pasta, sauted with a little butter

You can use the liquid anywhere you’d use stock – and since you can use stock almost anywhere you’d use water, there are lots of possibilities.  You can use it with the mushrooms, or for extra flavor in another dish. It’s especially good:

  • In soups
  • In risotto
  • In the cooking water for rice or pasta
  • In sauces and gravy

If you’ve never used dried mushrooms, you’ll be amazed how much they boost the flavor in a dish.  They’re like a secret weapon of deliciousness.

One pitfall: don’t hoard them.  I have a bad habit of not using them except on the most special of occasions… but they’re not that pricey when you use them in small quantities. And when you let them get pushed to the back of your pantry, you’ll forget they’re there.  So get them, and use them!

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Surviving the Snowpocalypse

By Jo | Published: February 6, 2010

Snowpocalypse is what they’re calling the blizzard that hit the DC area yesterday, and it’s not far wrong: 20+ inches of snow on the ground, and it’s still coming.  If you’re one of the unlucky 210,000 people without power, it’s pretty miserable.

snowpocalypse2

The roads are bad, and the government let us know that it won’t even try to plow local streets until after the snow stops.  One thoroughfare near us is blocked by several fallen trees (yes, that’s a road in the picture); other main roads are covered in slush that may soon turn to ice.

Fallen tree

But we’re lucky to still have power (so far, so good), we’ve got nowhere to go, and I’m excited to spend a weekend hunkered down and eating good food.  How better to spend a blizzard than by baking?

Other people seemed to have the same idea.  Our local grocery stores on Thursday night were out of things like bread and milk (for the panicked pantry-stocker), chips and beer (for the panicked sports fan – no one’s going shopping between now and the Superbowl), and dangerously low on chocolate chips (which was my priority).  Fortunately, Nathan secured us some chocolate chips, and we’re well stocked to spend the weekend eating.

pretzel with cocoa

If you’re snowed in, now or in the future, here are some of my favorite storm survival techniques:

  • Hot cocoa is a must.  None of the instant powdered stuff, please.  Put milk in a saucepan, add cocoa powder and sugar (in roughly equal quantities for your standard cocoa – make it sweeter or more chocolatey depending on your preferences), and heat it until it’s steaming.  Or, add pieces of real chocolate for an even richer drink.  Then spice it up with cinnamon or cayenne (for a Mexican flavor), mint or almond extract, or your favorite liquor (rum, kahlua, and Bailey’s are some of my favorites), and enjoy.
  • Cookies!  I made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough last night, formed it into rolls, wrapped it in plastic, and chilled it in the fridge.  Now it’s ready for us to slice off and bake cookies anytime, and have fresh hot cookies whenever we want them.  But really, in a snowstorm, any sort of cookie will do.
  • Bread can be an all-day activity, and is satisfying in an entirely different way that cookies.  I’m making pretzels.
  • Soup of any kind.  Tomato soup, lentil soup, vegetable soup, all perfect.
  • Chili.  I’m making chili tomorrow for my coworker’s Superbowl chili cookoff, but I would make it anyway.  If I can’t make it to the party because the roads still aren’t clear, I WILL make it anyway.
  • Macaroni and cheese. Need I say more?
  • Baked potatoes, which we had last night loaded with cheese and broccoli.
  • Something extravagant – because, has there ever been a better time to spend all day in the kitchen?  It’s the perfect excuse to try your hand at pasta-making, make a four-course French dinner, or simmer a curry for hours on the stove. Make enchiladas with homemade tortillas and sauce.  Use one of the 5 gallons of milk you stocked up on to make your own cheese.

Wherever you are, if you’re in this storm, you’re not going anywhere.  So flip through your cookbooks, and make something tasty!

Are you stuck in the snowpocalypse this weekend?  What are you making?

Posted in comfort food, eating in | 1 Comment

Vegetarian Meatballs

By Jo | Published: January 26, 2010

Meatballs in pan

There should be a story behind this “meatball” recipe; I should tell you that it was my great-grandmother’s veggie meatball recipe, or that it was invented in a fit of brilliance when I had meat-eating friends coming to dinner and wanted to trick them.

The truth is less grand, even a little sad.  I lost this recipe.  I made it up 3 years ago, and I don’t remember why.  I was probably frustrated with the selection of vegetarian meatballs in the freezer section (which usually look and taste like mush), so I set out to make better ones.  I made these, or something very like them, was extremely pleased with myself, and then forgot all about it.  I even forgot how I made them.  So I felt foolish over the past several months as I kept wanting meatballs, but avoided making them because I wasn’t sure how.

Eventually I just buckled down and took my best guess, and they came out just great.  Lesson: make that food you’ve been avoiding, because you’ll almost always be glad you did.

This is also one reason I’m glad I have this blog; when I make something that comes out well, I can record it, publicly, and never forget it again.

Baked meatballs

These tofu meatballs don’t actually taste that different than regular meatballs, at least in my mind.  Tofu itself has little flavor, the nuts and mushrooms give it a meaty taste, and the seasoning does the rest.  Ground beef honestly doesn’t have that much flavor on its own – a few spices like fennel and oregano, which are often found with meatballs, are enough to trick the palate.  Crumbled tofu even has the same texture as ground beef.  They don’t behave that differently than meatballs, either, though mine crumbled more than I wanted them to.  They held together great when I baked and froze them, but when I added them to pasta sauce, they started falling apart.  I used egg as a binder, though, and I’m 99% sure that adding a second egg would solve the problem. (I know they didn’t fall apart last time I made them… Do real meatballs fall apart, too?)

meatball mixture

On the other hand, you could eliminate the egg altogether, mix this up with tomato sauce, and have a great “meat” sauce.  Not a bad alternative.

The biggest variable in this recipe is the tofu.  Not all tofu are alike – mine was very firm and unusually dry.  If your tofu works out differently, post a comment and let me know what happens!

Pasta with meatballs and cheese

Vegetarian Meatballs

  • 1 lb very firm tofu
  • 1/2 cup walnuts, finely ground
  • 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
  • 1/4 to 1/2 cup vegetables, very finely chopped (I used mushrooms)
  • 1-2 cloves garlic, very finely minced
  • Seasonings – I used:
    • 1 tsp oregano
    • 1 tsp fennel seed
    • 1/2 tsp basil
    • 1/2 tsp salt, to taste
    • pepper, to taste
  • 1-2 eggs

Crumble the tofu into small crumbs (I found that a pastry cutter made this easy).  The finer all the ingredients are, the finer the texture of the meatballs will be – see the picture below.

tofu for meatballs

Stir in the nuts, breadcrumbs, garlic, and your choice of vegetables.  Any vegetables will work as long as they’re very small.  Mushrooms, carrots, and spinach should work well.  Add the seasonings, mix well, then taste and adjust the flavors until you’re happy with it.

Once the taste is right, beat the egg and add it, stirring to spread it evenly through the tofu mixture.

At this point, the mixture should be just slightly wet and sticky, so it’ll hold into a ball if you squeeze a handful. If it’s too dry, try adding some stock or even another egg.  If it’s too wet, add more breadcrumbs to absorb the moisture.

Heat the oven to 350, and lightly oil a baking sheet.  Form the meatballs by gathering a small handful of the tofu mixture and squeezing it into a roughly round shape.  Don’t try to roll it to perfect the shape, or it will crumble.  Place the balls on the baking sheet, close together but not touching.

Bake for about 10 minutes.  The outsides will be firm and lightly browned.

Serve immediately with pasta and sauce, or freeze them to save for later.  To reheat, just cook them in a pan with a little oil until they’re nicely browned.

One meatball missing

Posted in mock meat | 1 Comment

What scares you?

By Jo | Published: January 24, 2010

Amanda, over at the Internet Food Association, posted this week about her success in making risotto – her “Everest,” a dish that has always intimidated her.

I’m pretty sure everyone has foods like this.  I’ve never worried about risotto, and as a vegetarian I happily don’t need to deal with things like de-boning chicken, but bread always makes me very nervous.  It’s such a staple, not to mention so delicious, that I would love to be able to turn out loaf after crusty loaf.

But whenever I make bread, it never seems to rise like it should, and no matter what the recipe says about the correct consistency – wet and shaggy, or smooth and supple – mine always does nothing but stick to my hands, no matter how much flour I use.  I think there’s an innate bread-sense that I don’t have.

Fortunately, winter is the best time for fresh baked bread, so maybe I’ll take Amanda’s advice and try to “make it my bitch” over the next couple months…

Is there a food that really scares you? Have you been able to conquer it?

Posted in experiment | 3 Comments

Help on homemade burrata

By Jo | Published: January 23, 2010

I’ve mentioned Ricki Carroll (the “Cheese Queen”) and her New England Cheesemaking Supply Company a number of times on this blog.  She wrote the book (literally) on cheesemaking, and I order most of my cheese supplies from her company.

I was pretty excited to see that New England Cheesemaking has started a blog, and that they featured my post on burrata!  I thought that was about the coolest thing that could happen to me this month, blogging-wise.

So imagine me jumping up and down (…just a little) when Jim Wallace, Ricki’s “tech person”, wrote a followup to my post and offered some advice on how to shape the cheese.  I had read that burrata was traditionally wrapped in leaves (though I’ve always seen it in plastic on the rare occasions when I find it in stores).  I thought the leaves were probably for appearance, or maybe helped to keep it from drying out.  Jim suggests that they’re also helpful in forming and filling the burrata.

I will have to try this next time I make it – and perhaps use it as an excuse to make it sooner, rather than later!

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Sweet potato quesadillas

By Jo | Published: January 20, 2010

How delicious are these quesadillas? Let’s listen in on a conversation Nathan and I had earlier tonight, when we’d both just gotten home and both our stomachs were growling:

“We need dinner,” I told him.  “We have two options. We can have spaghetti with the veggie meatballs -”

“Did I mention those meatballs were really, really good?” he interrupts.  (They are good.  I’ll be sharing that recipe in a few days, just as soon as I get some pictures.)

“- or sweet potato quesadillas,” I finish.

He does not hesitate for a second.  “The quesadillas.”  There was no competition.

cooking_quesadilla

Sweet potatoes are good for many, many things, and I don’t use them often enough, or creatively enough.  I’ll usually just bake them and mash them, to eat as a side dish.  But in this dinner, they’re the stars.  They’re quite literally the secret ingredient.  I will confess that I’ve started keeping already-baked sweet potatoes in the fridge just so I can make this recipe. It’s rapidly becoming one of our favorite dishes.

If you have baked sweet potato on hand, it only takes about 15 minutes to make.  If not, then what were you thinking? But it’s not the end of the world, because it only takes about an hour to bake them at 425, and you can speed the process by microwaving them for about 5 minutes, then finishing them in the oven.  (Or just cook them in the microwave until they’re soft, but I don’t think they taste as good.)

You can season these however you want, but I think they’re great with just a few spoonfuls of salsa mixed in. You could go crazy and add spices, maybe a little cumin or cinnamon, dice some onions, chop some garlic, maybe sauté some peppers… but if you just want to stir in some salsa from a jar, it’ll be just fine.

sweet_potato

Sweet Potato Quesadillas

  • Some baked, mashed sweet potato (about 1 medium potato for every 2 people)
  • Some cheese (I like sharp cheddar)
  • Some salsa (pretty much any kind)
  • Some tortillas

Mix the salsa (or other seasonings of your choice) into the sweet potato.

Spread the sweet potato about 1/4 inch thick over a tortilla.  Cover with shredded cheese. Then cover with another tortilla.

Fry the whole thing in a large frying pan (no oil needed) over medium heat for a couple minutes.  When the cheese is just beginning to get melty, flip it over (carefully! but it should hold together fine) and cook it on the other side for a couple minutes more. The tortillas should develop some pleasing black spots, but should not burn.

Serve piping hot and try not to burn your fingers as you gobble it up.

half_quesadilla2

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Guest post: Italian wedding soup

By Jo | Published: January 16, 2010

This “recipe” comes from my friend Lee (@mr_butlertron), who is an amazing cook and wrote this… recipe? essay? stream-of-consciousness story?… about the soup he made for dinner the other night.  It’s full of improvisation (if you’re a regular reader, you know I’m all about improvisation) and I love how he captures both the excitement of inspiration and the “oh, crap” moments where things don’t go quite as expected (but somehow work out anyway). If you cook a lot, this will probably sound very familiar!

italian wedding? soup.
(it’s not minestrone, because no tomatoes, but it has beans and a bit of pasta in it, so, italian wedding? sure.)

ingredients:
-one of the massive onions from costco
-a potato from the farm share. wait, it’s rotted. two potatoes from the grocery store.
-those curried carrots leftover from shabbas. what, you don’t have curried carrots laying around? why aren’t you making more mildly curried carrots? they’re delicious!
-three big cloves of garlic
-you know how housemate c made stuffed cabbage, so she left behind the center of the cabbage when the leaves get too small to really stuff? that cabbage.
-a can of beans. which ones aren’t people using? oh, the roman beans. no one knows what the crap those are good in.
-the cup and a half of veggie broth left over from the last time [housemate] made risotto
-the handful of pasta left in the box on the shelf. you know the one.
-the stuff that’s in the kitchen. you know, olive oil, water, salt, pepper, spice drawer.

process:
take out the big saucepan and start heating olive oil in the bottom of it on medium-low. small-dice the onion and throw it in. in the time it’ll take you to small-dice the potatoes, the onions will be ready for company, so toss them in. realize there isn’t enough olive oil, so add some more. slice the garlic thin and set it to the side, then get started working on the carrots. they’re already in fat rounds, but you don’t want to puree the soup, so cut them down into small-dice, too. this’ll take a while, because they’re slippery. every couple of carrot rounds, stir the potatoes and onions. wish for a celery stalk, and consider adding celery seed, but decide against it. keep cutting and stirring until you’ve broken down the carrots, then throw them and the garlic slices in. now it’s time to get to work on the cabbage. slice it into very thin slices, then turn them 90 degrees and do it again. you want those leaves small and unrecognizable. throw them in as they’re ready, then stir some more. realize you’re stirring too much, that you want something to deglaze later, so cover the pot and walk away for a minute until it becomes too unbearable and you have to stir it again. (i’m a hoverer, can’t you tell?) once you see the veggies starting to stick to the bottom and turn into delicious brown stuff, you know it’s ready, so turn up the heat and deglaze with the broth, quickly adding also the undrained beans and three cans of water. stir stir stir. contemplate that onion soup you love, and go to the spice drawer looking for tarragon. lament the lack of tarragon, but espy some smoky paprika. add a generous amount, along with some malt vinegar. red wine vinegar would probably be better, but you don’t have any, it’s too hard to find. add salt and pepper, cover it, turn to low, and walk away. go upstairs, gchat with a cute boy, watch a tv episode. dinner’s not for another hour, so let it go. when you come downstairs half an hour before dinnertime, it’s not even boiling. go back upstairs, that’s where your email lives. come back down at fifteen to dinner, turn the heat up to boiling, and throw in the pasta. serves one, plus five housemates who were expected but didn’t show up.

Posted in experiment | 2 Comments