table talk / By Jada Calypso Brotman

DIY Cheese

Stovetop paneer is hella punk rock

(July 31, 2008)  It’s hot. Really, really hot, in a way that you lucky Humboldters may be lucky enough to only recall as a theoretical concept. I am sitting on my bed, huddled like a junkie over and under a precariously stacked slalom of fans whirring away in dissonant hums, waiting for the timer to ding its happy little ding to let me know my fragola is ready and I can ignore the heat in favor of food for a few minutes before beginning anew my battle against the omnipresent swelter.

In the midst of a Brooklyn July, when merely turning in bed involves sweat and it’s difficult to discern between the steam from the subway grates and the actual air, it’s hard to work up too much enthusiasm about cooking anything that involves an enclosed space, much less an oven. I make a lot of salads, it’s true, but man cannot live on raw corn, jalapeno and cilantro alone (as much as I have been trying).

GALLERY >

Working at a cheese counter means I can eat a lot of cheese and bread, which is a nice hot-weather thing, but only up to a point. We have maybe 60 to 70 cheeses at any one given time at the cheese counter, and at the risk of sounding like I’m kvetching about the most awesome underpaid job ever — eating cheese — when it’s hot, there is only so much Epoisse, five-year Gouda and Robiola I can deal with. So lately I’ve been experimenting with some fresh homemade cheeses, at the instigation of my father, Darius “Make-it-myself” Brotman. I’ve been delighted to find they are easy to make, relatively cheap, and cold, fresh and delicious to eat. They are also very versatile.

Paneer, if you haven’t eaten Indian in a while, is a delicate, crumbly, milk-tasting cheese from northern India. I just read that sentence and realized “milk-tasting” sounds retarded, but that’s what it is: very fresh, sweet and quiet, tasting like a concentrated version of whatever milk you used, which I suppose it is. This means, of course, you need to use the nicest-tasting milk you can get, which to my palate is organic. I am not a believer that all things organic taste better (hello, flaccid kumquats?) but I have found organic milk is really preferable. Whether this is true in Humboldt where the cows that give milk are 10 feet from my bedroom window — closer, when the fence busts — I am not sure. The point is, if you don’t smack your lips drinking it straight, don’t use it for paneer.

So as I said, paneer is easy to make. You do need to pay attention. Milk scorches easily, so use a heavy-bottomed pan. Keep an eye on it — it takes a while to come up to just below simmering, so you can go away and smoke for three minutes at the beginning, but make sure to keep an eye on it, stir every few minutes and keep the heat low, low, low. As far as I can tell scorching the milk is the only way to screw this up.

Paneer

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