Homemade Paneer and only SEVEN more weeks?!
Hi everyone
Wow it's been a couple of months. Life has been a little crazy and it's been kind of a battle to sit down and relax, between work, study, writing and a social life (don't get me wrong, I love being busy). It's so crazy to sit here and type this up, looking back at the title I've just typed... SEVEN more weeks?! Yes, that's right! I can't believe how quickly the time has gone. Just over three years ago I was this timid young girl of 19, thinking about the future, and wondering where I was going with my life. I really had no idea! And now I'm sitting here a mere weeks away from what we've all been calling "The Real World"! The big scary world where it's no longer about what grade you'll get, or pulling all-nighters to finish the last 200 words of a 3000 word essay that is due in a few hours, and you probably should have been doing that last week, instead of watching the five episodes of this great new TV show that caught your eye on Putlocker or YouTube.
Now it's the intimidating moment of searching for jobs and trying to apply for everything you can find! Today I applied for two, but it's so hard because there is hardly anything out there. The other scary thing is knowing that you're competing against roughly 30 people who all want the same jobs, and your tutors keep telling you that only 85% of the class will actually have a job when they graduate. Now the pressure really builds and you're basically fighting to get the job that they all want!
So that's both exciting and scary, to be honest!
Now to cover the first part of the title above... Homemade Paneer!
A couple of weeks ago I had my good friend Natalie over for dinner, and I made a pumpkin, coconut and chickpea curry. I wanted something that would definitely be gluten free and I felt like a bit of a break from chicken or beef. So Dad told me about HOMEMADE PANEER! I found a recipe of Pinterest and it was so easy and seriously delicious - imagine something with the texture of feta but the taste of mozzarella (at least that's how it tasted for me)! This recipe was a bit made up and little bit of it came from a Jamie Oliver recipe that I found on Pinterest. It was originally going to be pumpkin soup, because I had half of a Crown/Grey pumpkin in the fridge that really needed to be used! So here is how I made the soup...which eventually became a curry:
Gluten-Free Pumpkin, Coconut and Chickpea Curry - with Paneer
1/2 Crown/Grey Pumpkin
Enough water to cover it
Salt & Pepper
Dried parsley - 1 tsp
Crushed garlic and ginger - 1 tsp each
Garlic salt
Onion powder (GF) - 1 tsp
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp crushed chili
2 tsp curry powder
1 tin coconut cream
Peel the pumpkin and rinse under warm water. Cut into chunks and put into a large pot. Add enough water to cover the pumpkin. Boil until the pumpkin is soft enough to mash. Drain off most of the water (leaving about 1/4 cup) and add salt, pepper, dried parsley, crushed garlic, crushed ginger, garlic salt, onion powder (GF), turmeric powder, crushed chili and curry powder . Mix it all together. Add 1 tin of coconut cream and cook for a further ten minutes. (If you are cooking in advance, put it into the freezer. To serve this curry, follow along below).
Homemade Paneer - (my version, but I've linked the website below anyway)
4 cups of milk (I mixed 2 heaped teaspoons of milk powders to 1 cup of water)
1/4 cup vinegar (the recipe also says you can use lemon juice, but vinegar was closer on hand)
1 pinch of salt
Bring the milk to a boil on the stove - watch it closely. Once it's frothy and steamy, take it off the heat and add your vinegar (or lemon juice). Give it a quick stir and cover with a lid or a plate for around 10 minutes. The milk should curdle - if it hasn't, add more vinegar or lemon and cover again for a further 10 minutes. Place a cheesecloth (or just a clean cloth like the one you use for doing dishes) into a sieve. Pour the curds into the cheesecloth to drain out the whey. Twist and squeeze the cloth to get all the liquid out, and then push it into an airtight square/rectangular container. (The original recipe - linked below - goes into more detail but I found it easier to just push it into a container. I put it into a container and you can store it in the fridge for a maximum of 2 days!)
So easy and delicious.
On the night Natalie came for dinner, I simply pulled the pumpkin curry sauce out of the freezer (I made it two days in advance) and let it defrost in the sink for a few hours. I put the curry sauce into a pot and let it heat through, before adding:
1 - 2 tins of chickpeas (drained)
Paneer, cut into cubes
Serve it on rice and of course you need to give yourself a tall glass of Coke or Lemonade on the side. So delicious and it freezes really well too! For a total meat-lover, I didn't even really miss the meat in it, because the chickpeas and paneer gave it the meaty texture. (If the paneer crumbles, like mine did, don't stress too much, because it still tastes just as good!)
Hope you guy are having a wonderful life, and hope you enjoy this recipe. Let me know if you give it a try. It makes heaps so will easily serve 4 people!
Aletia xx
