A week later, we still hadn't made a dent. The clock was ticking. How to use up so much freaking spinach? I'll tell you how: palak paneer.
Palak paneer is an Indian dish that is often labeled interchangeably with saag paneer. The difference, according to my research, is that saag refers to a dish that can use several types of greens, usually mustard greens, in addition to the spinach, whereas palak is just spinach. Look at that - you learned something about Indian cuisine today! Yay you.
The paneer part is cheese. It's a very light cheese, on par with a farmer cheese or queso fresco. You can buy this cheese in specialty shops but every recipe I read lamented the quality of the frozen paneer when compared to fresh so I decided to get a little crazy and actually make my own paneer.
I know what you're thinking: "Sully, you made your own cheese? No way!" And I would say, you are correct, there WAS no whey because I drained it all off! Hahaha!! I would then duck the shoes and lamps being thrown at me.
But truly, it is a deceptively simple process. Since cheese is almost always store-bought, it's easy to think that it must be difficult to make at home, or require special tools. I am here to tell you that neither is true. This is how I did it:
Slowly boil 1/2 gallon of whole milk. (Or more if you want more cheese - I found this to make the perfect amount for a 4 person meal.) If you have a dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot, I highly recommend using it since that will help heat the milk the evenly and cut down on the possibility of scorching. Also stir it frequently. If the milk does scorch (which mine admittedly did), it won't harm the final cheese but it is a pain on the ARM to scrub off the bottom of the pot after wards. Seriously. Take my word on this. So - bring the milk to a boil and when it starts foaming up, remove from the heat and immediately add around 1/4 cup of lemon juice or white vinegar and stir. It will take about 20 seconds and then you'll see the milk separate into the curds (the milk solids) and whey (the milk liquids) - a sight that always makes my heart drop since it is usually the sign of a failed dish, i.e. "broken", but this is actually exactly what you want. No need to stir a lot, just enough to get the separation going and then drain into a colander lined with cheese cloth. It'll be hot (hot hot, hotter than hell), but do your best to pull the sides of the cheese cloth together and squeeze out moisture. At this point you can twist up the cloth to make a ball a little bigger than a tennis ball. Grab a sheet pan and something really heavy - I used my cast-iron dutch oven - and stack it on top of the cheese ball on the sheet pan to press it (bind it). You'll need to leave it like that for a few hours. There will be moisture around the sides of the cheese from being pressed but you can leave it there, it won't harm anything. And there you go! You made cheese! Yay you again!
I also made some ghee yesterday but I'm not going to get into that process - that would be a whole other blog. I found a really great step-by-step process here. I succeeded after burning the crap outta my first batch. Ah well. It got done eventually.
On to the palak! I read quite a few recipes before settling on my approach. Most included a step to blend the spinach although there were a couple that insisted the correct approach was to cook the spinach for 40-45 minutes to break it down. I discovered my wand blender in the basement while looking for some microphones (don't ask) and took that as a sign: blended it shall be. I also have to add that a wand (stick) blender is one of my very favorite kitchen gadgets and I highly recommend them to anyone who makes a lot of soups or sauces. They are as effective as a blender but faster and easier to clean up - unless of course you really enjoy taking apart the whole friggin' blender and dealing with those mean, rat-teeth blades but... I don't. Some people like that kind of thing but I'm not one of them. I'm not judging. Much.
The prep is fairly intensive since there is some grinding that needs to happen in addition to the usual slicing and dicing. You will need: 1/2 of an onion, diced small; 1 medium ripe tomato, blanched and shocked, then skinned and mashed to a puree; 1/4 cup of roasted cashews (3-4 minutes in the oven @ 350) cooled and ground; and finally a paste of ginger, garlic and spices. I used garam masala, coriander and cumin. Cilantro and cayenne pepper are also appropriate; this part is very open to interpretation. Use 1/4 - 1/2 tsp of each and bust out your mortar and pestle and a little elbow grease. (Or recruit your boyfriend as he passes through the kitchen for a beer. Everyone has their own methods.) If you don't have a mortar and pestle, finely mince everything with a chef's knife while alternately pressing and smearing the mixture on your board to break it down. But seriously, consider picking a M & P up; they're not super expensive and they are wonderful multi-taskers (as Alton would say).
Some recipes blanch the spinach first but I opted for the saute method to infuse more flavor. Use a fine dice of a green chili if you want some heat or if you're cooking for kids (as I was), use garlic instead. In a large saute pan, heat some oil (I used olive) and toss in some minced garlic (I LOVE garlic so I used around 4 cloves - adjust to your tastes) and right when it starts to brown, add the spinach. I mean, really pile it in there. I used at least half of the Costco box. Cook it down until it's a nice dark green and completely wilted, 5 - 10 minutes. Then remove from heat and either blend or pour into a bowl and wand-blend with a pinch of salt. Set aside.
In that same large saute pan, heat about 2 T of ghee on medium high heat and saute the diced onion until golden brown. Add your paste and saute for a couple more minutes - now you'll really start filling up the house with awesome aromas. This is where I did something that was not mentioned in any of the recipes I read: I deglazed with white wine. This helped to pull up the bits of paste and onion that cooked to the bottom of the pan. Pour in maybe a half a cup and use a wooden spoon to scrape up all that baked on goodness. Let it reduce to burn off the alcohol and then enter the final stages of the dish by adding in the tomato, ground cashew and pureed spinach. Reduce heat, stir and let everything warm through.
So now I bet you're wondering, "But Sully, where did that cheese go?" Well, I'll tell ya where it went - it went in my belly! But seriously - this is the point where you can add it in. After it's been pressed for a few hours, just unwrap and cut into 1" square chunks and that's it. You can fry them in some ghee until golden brown or use them as-is. I fried mine in ghee but didn't find that it added all that much and will probably skip that step next time.
Throw in the cheese and also feel free to add water or some kind of dairy product to thin the dish if it's too thick. It shouldn't be too runny, but it should have some moment. I added some heavy cream because, helloooooo everything tastes better with cream in it, but you can also use water, yogurt, sour cream or half and half. Just mind your temperature if you use sour cream or half and half - if you let it boil, it will probably break and this would be the bad kind of dairy breakage. Nice low heat, cover for a few minutes, stir and voila - you have made a lovely Indian spinach curry! Yay all of us! Serve over basmati rice or with pita bread or naan.
I did not take pictures of the finished dish a la minute because, um, I forgot. But this is a pretty pic of the leftovers which I can guarantee you, will taste better today than they did last night. And, oh hey! There's the postcard for the new Factory show, "1985" in the back ground! How the heck did that get in there?!
Notes to Self Section
I already mentioned not frying the cheese and then I would also like to try adding a pinch of nutmeg (yes, nutmeg) to the sauteed spinach before blending it. Nutmeg and spinach play very well together and I'm curious about how that flavor might develop through the dish. I suspect it would be very interesting and tasty. I also might try topping this with some whole roasted cashews or fried garlic chips to add some texture. We added a can of garbanzo beans but everything was still soft soft soft. I would also add a pinch of salt to my cheese to hopefully impart a little more flavor.
Overall, I give the dish 8 out of 10 Rics. Extremely flavorful and full of options, it's a little labor intensive but now that I know what I'm doing, it'll go faster next time.
So, the next time some one asks you the musical question, do you want to know a secret? You can whisper, "It's paneer."
