Paneer or Queso Fresco

I first stumbled on this recipe for paneer from showmethecurry.com when I was looking for recipes from India.  I wondered after first making it and observing its qualities if it could be used as we use queso fresco, down here in the desert southwest.  Although paneer is a cheese made in India, and queso fresco is a cheese from Mexico, it seemed they were practically the same thing.

Both cheeses are what is termed "fresh cheese", meaning they are made, then used immediately or soon afterward, instead of being set aside to cure.  Both are made using milk and an acid, but no "coagulator", such as rennet.  Both can crumble nicely.  Both can be cut, if you want.  And neither one melts when cooked.

A little more research confirmed it:  a recipe for a basic queso fresco turned out to be exactly the same!

As the next bread recipe I want to try requires cheese, and as one commenter said they had the best results using queso fresco, I decided it was time to take pictures and post this adventure, as well, on my way toward the next bread.

Ingredients:

2 quarts milk  (I've used whole milk before with good results.  This time, I used 1 percent.)
1/4 cup lemon juice or white vinegar (I used lemon juice.)
salt to taste

Seriously!!  That's all there is in it!  (I figured for this, I did not need an ingredient picture.)

Now, down to business.  First, put the milk in a heavy cooking pot and bring it gradually to a boil, stirring gradually at first and more consistently later on so the bottom doesn't burn.

 
This will be the one step in the entire process which has the risk of driving you insane.  At least, it drives me insane . . . every single time.  It could be that I'm heating it at too low a temperature, but I find it can take the better part of an hour for my milk to finally reach a boil.  By the end, I find I've been standing over the pot, staring maniacally at the surface, willing bubbles to rise.

After the milk finally reaches a boil, stir in the 1/4 cup lemon juice.  Keep stirring.  After about 10-15 seconds, the milk solids will start to separate from the whey.  Keep stirring until it appears to be completely separated.

Remove from heat and allow the "curds and whey" to sit for a few minutes.

 

Prepare a colander or strainer over a bowl.  Cover it with several layers of cheesecloth.  (I used four.)  A single layer of muslin can be used, instead.

Pour the curds and whey into the cheesecloth.  Pick up the four corners of the cheesecloth and tie the opposite ones together.  Remove this from the bowl.

Don't throw away the whey!  It's good for you and can be used in place of water in your bread recipes.  (You can see I used it in my "normal bread" recipe when I wrote that one up.)  Just store it in the refrigerator for a week or less until you are ready to use it.

Here's an overhead view of my cheesecloth hanging on the wooden spoon inside the 2-gallon beverage dispenser my husband picked up for me, which I never use because it's just too big to have taking up space on my counter . . . Makes a great place in which to drain paneer, though.

This is what you see after about 30 minutes.  Most of the whey has drained out.  (Isn't it amazing how little cheese actually comes out of a half gallon of milk?)

If you want a more firm cheese, you can take it off the cheesecloth at this point and knead in some flour.  I haven't done this, but I do knead in a bit of salt for flavor.  If you want to make your cheese herbed, you can add whatever you want here, as well.

Place the cheese back on the cheesecloth and shape into whatever general shape you want.

Fold the cheesecloth over the paneer neatly.

Place the paneer over something which will drain.  (This is a storage container into which my husband drilled holes to use as a makeshift steamer in our rice cooker.  The things we do, sometimes, to improvise . . . It photographs better than my other method of using my oversized steamer insert, placing an upside-down saucer beneath it to lift it from the plate.)

Add some weight on top of the paneer.  (You don't really need 3 whole pounds, but that was the weight of the can my daughter grabbed when I asked her for a weight.  I shrugged and figured it would do.  It's powdered honey, by the way, in case you were wondering.)

Let the weight sit on the paneer for about 30 minutes.  This time, I confess, it sat longer, because I had someplace I had to be . . .

And that's all there is to it!  You can see from the edges that the texture is crumbly, but the area more toward the center is stuck together well.  As it sat under the weight longer than I usually do, it is more dry than I usually make it, but that will be to my advantage, I think, for my planned bread recipe.

At this point, if you're ready to use it, you can crumble or cut it.  If you want to store it, use a container with a lid, and add some water, according to the Show Me the Curry ladies.  (I've never seen queso fresco stored that way, but it seems to work.)  This is, incidentally, why I tend to form mine in a square, because it fits neatly into one of those cheap "entree-sized" food storage containers.

Now the challenge will be not eating it all before I try out the bread recipe I want to try . . . This is, after all, the cheese I spread on my Simple Wheat Crackers the night I was dying for crackers and cheese . . . So yummy . . .

Afterward:

Live and learn!  One thing I did not understand when I posted this is that the homogenized milk purchased at the store does not make this as well as milk which has not been put through this process.  As I did not have a source of raw cow's milk, I could only use the store-packaged, homogenized milk.  Just recently, I tried this recipe using our own home-produced goat milk, and it came out much differently.  The texture was smoother, the curds stuck together more completely (I could actually slice it better), and the flavor, of course, was richer.  <shrug>   Now I know.

Aloo Paratha

I have cilantro!!

This is only significant because every single recipe I have found for any paratha whatsoever seems to require cilantro.  Unfortunately, it is one herb I do not have growing on my windowsill.  (I'm not sure it could be grown on a windowsill, as it tends to get very large.)  And as our nearest decent grocery store is about 70 miles away, I can't just drive around the corner and pick it up anytime I want it.

But after last week's excursion to . . . well, I'm not going to say where I went, but it was on business . . . I was able to stop by a store on the way home and pick some up.

The first time I heard of paratha was through the showmethecurry.com ladies, while browsing potential Indian bread recipes.  But I ran into a problem when I started seriously thinking about making paratha:  they wanted chaat masala in their fillings.  I don't have chaat masala, and while I recognize I could order it on the Internet, and probably will, eventually, I wanted to stick with ingredients I could easily pick up locally.  (Yes, around here, 70 miles is considered local shopping.)  I finally stumbled on vahrehvah.com, after discovering this video on YouTube.  In this chef's recipe, garam masala is used instead of chaat masala. And garam masala was in my cupboard, purchased some time ago as a "just in case" spice.

But Vahrehvah.com's recipe is a little ambiguous on the quantity of ingredients for the dough or how it is to be made.  (I think he depends on his videos.)  So I turned back to showmethecurry.com for the dough.  In their aloo paratha recipe, they refer readers to their chapatti recipe for the dough.  (Wow, the effort it takes, sometimes, to get a recipe put together . . .)

After a little juggling, I finally had my working recipe, consisting of the dough from showmethecurry.com and the filling from Vahrehvah.com.  I ended up reducing some of the spices because my kids aren't used to something quite that full-flavored.  (And, sadly enough, my tongue won't handle extra-spicy things anymore.)

Ingredients:

Dough:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (good thing I just ground some)
3 teaspoons oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons warm water (In case anyone is interested, this makes 5/8 cup of water.)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour in which to dip the dough while rolling
Oil for pan frying

Filling:
3 Tablespoons fresh coriander leaves (This is cilantro.)
3/4 teaspoon garam masala (I used 1/2 teaspoon.)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 Tablespoon cumin/coriander powder (This can be either/or or blended to taste. I ended up with a touch over a 1/2 Tablespoon cumin.)
Hot red pepper powder to taste (I put about 1/16 teaspoon.)
3 cups large potatoes, boiled and grated or mashed (Grated is recommended.  I wonder if riced would be even better.)
3/4 cup onion

First, the dough!

In a large bowl, mix the flour and the salt.  Add the oil and mix again.  Slowly add warm water and knead to form a dough.  (You might not need all the water.)

Shape the dough into a ball and rub a little oil on it to coat the outside.  Then cover it and let it stand for at least 15 minutes.

While the dough rests, it is time for the filling.

I learned something about grating potatoes right after cooking them . . . After boiling the potatoes, I put them into some cold water to cool them to the point where I could handle them.  This happened surprisingly quickly, or so I thought.  As I grated the potatoes, I realized that while the exterior was cool enough to touch, the interior was still very hot.  It was kind of amusing to see the grated potato steaming beneath my grater, but it was not so amusing when the potato became small enough I kept accidentally touching the hot part.  Note to self:  next time, prepare the potatoes a little earlier.
 

The recipes I had read emphasized that everything in the filling needed to be chopped very fine, or minced.  If you have a chopper similar to this, finely chopping onions becomes a snap.

In his video, the chef at Vahrehvah.com states the ingredients can be either mixed uncooked or cooked.  But, he said, the cooked version "always turns out tastier."  So I decided mine would be cooked.

As the potatoes were already cooked, the only things which really needed to be cooked were the onions and spices.  First, I added just enough oil to the pan to prevent sticking, then added the onions.  I cooked for a minute or two over medium heat, then added the spices, stirring to make sure they were evenly cooked.

Once everything was nicely cooked, it was time to add the potatoes, just to mix them in.  Since they did not need to be cooked, I took an alterate tack, adding the cooked ingredients to the bowl where I had the potatoes waiting, then mixing.

The filling definitely does not look like it is rocket science.  The chef even said you could add pretty much whatever spices--or even green chilis--you want to the filling.  This is reassuring, as it seems it will be difficult to completely mess it up by any method except, perhaps, over-spicing it.

Divide the filling into 8 equal size parts.  You will be rolling/smushing these parts into balls.

Now that the filling is ready, back to the dough!

Knead the dough and divide it into 8 parts, rolling each part into a ball.  Keep a bowl with some whole wheat flour handy for dipping the dough if it should start to stick.  Slightly flatten the dough a little and dip it briefly in the flour.

 

Using a rolling pin, roll out the ball to about 4 inches diameter.  Take one of the balls of filling and place it on the dough.

Gather the dough around the ball to cover it, pinching at the top to hold the dough closed.

Slightly flatten the stuffed ball and dip it into the whole wheat flour on both sides.

 

 Using a rolling pin, roll out the stuffed ball into a disk.  Don't make it too thin.  (You still want your potato filling to be surrounded by bread dough.)

See?  You can see the cilantro through the dough.  (Isn't that cool?)  The hope is to be able to roll this out without any potato sticking out.  I did not completely succeed in this:  every one of the 8 parathas I rolled ended up with a tiny bit of potato sticking out somewhere, usually along the edge or at the pinched seam.  I may be able to prevent this by putting in less filling, but I'd rather not do that.  I suspect that a little practice will go a long way.

I found this rolling out process worked better if I did not attack the paratha as I would have attacked a tortilla or a pie crust.  (Seriously, I get violent with tortillas.)  Rolling by gently rocking back and forth, changing directions as I went, seemed to be more effective than trying to pick up my rolling pin, place it in the center, and roll out each time.  (I think people who are really good at tortillas actually roll back and forth, too . . .)

Place the paratha on a skillet preheated to medium or medium high.  When bubbles start to appear, it is time to turn it over.

Hard to see, but it is puffing up in some places around the edges.

I actually didn't follow the directions here, because I forgot to reread them as I was working.  Instead of spraying it lightly with cooking oil after turning it over, then turning and spraying with oil again every 30 seconds, I just turned it over and let it cook.  It would probably have had more crispy results if it had been sprayed with oil, but as it was, it still cooked and browned nicely.  (See the little golden/brown spots?)

Nicely puffed!

I did remember to roll out the next paratha as the previous one was cooking, just to save time.

And here they are!

I had some daughters who were very dubious about this whole "potato-filled unleavened bread" thing.  At least, they were dubious until I started tearing one into pieces for tasting . . .

In the end, all four of the daughters at home ended up loving it.  The reduction in the spices seemed to be about the perfect blend for us, although the heat built up over time to the point where the two youngest weren't sure they wanted to finish their halves of aloo paratha.  (Now we know why the Indians would most likely eat this with chutney or yogurt . . . I gave the girls pineapple rings, as I was out of yogurt.)  I've been told these freeze well, when separated by waxed paper, so the three I had left over after dinner will find their way there until the Senior Master Kitchen Helper is ready to have some in her lunchbox, as she requested.

I'm looking forward to trying paratha stuffed with other fillings.