Sour Grapes

Now that you can make paneer, get cracking and make one of the best paneer dishes out there :). I love saag paneer (aka palak paneer) and make it often at home. Here are some recipes from other bloggers around the web…

Mahanandi is a blog from India, named after the town in Andhra Pradesh, with some great recipes and pictures, check out her Saag Paneer recipe here. Check out her fabulous guide on making paneer as well as a collection of delicious recipes that I’m certain are going to make me a whole lot happier. Or how about a guide to Indian sweets? I already feel like I have to go to the gym.

Or how about a nice recipe from Kuidaore, where Jocelyn from Singapore offers a Saag Paneer inspired by the renowned chef Atul Kochhar of Benares Restaurant, London. She’s got a great post on her own experiences with Saag Paneer in the Indina home ;). I love her blog for it’s recipes and great food photos.

Perhaps some musings on curds and whey are in order along with a simple and tasty looking saag paneer recipe, courtesy of Pittsburg based blog Food and Paper?

Or how about a Hare Krishna inspired version from Barrett at collective blog Too Many Chefs?

In the end there’s just too many.. or perhaps not enough… does anyone else have any hot versions or tips on saag/palak paneer? I’ll post my own version promptly, and let me add that saag paneer makes a SPECTACULAR sandwich, squashed between some thick Israeli style pita bread.. heaven itself on the morning after

 When you can’t or don’t want meat, there’s always tofu. Exciting, no? Tofu can be tasty and I do love it, but it can also be kind of bland. Paneer is just so much more tasty. Think of it like a rich tofu. What’s more it’s super easy to make, all you need is milk and some vinegar or lemon juice. Generally 1L of milk gives me enough paneer for 2 to 3 people, it really depends on how hungry you are.

For 1L of milk you’ll usually need up to 2 Tbsp of neutral vinegar or lemon juice. Don’t go using raspberry vinegar, or balsamic vinegars, unless you want to get all experimental with the flavours. Lemon juice, white vinegar, white wine vinegar, cider vinegar, are all fine.

In a heavy bottomed pan heat the milk to the boiling point and turn it down to a simmer. Add the first Tbsp of lemon juice. You should see a bit of curdling beginning to happen. Give a little stir with a wooden spoon, and look at your curds. You want to keep adding lemon and giving a few gentle stirs until the liquid surrounding the curds is clear and the curds are nicely formed (see image 1). You should be patient when doing this as the curds won’t form spontaneously, it might take 30 seconds to a minute.

If you’ve added all your juice or vinegar to your gently simmering milk, and, after 2 minutes or so your curds havn’t nicely formed, add a bit more juice/vinegar and proceed as before. Give a gentle stir and watch the curds form.

Once your curds are formed, line a sieve or colander with a tea towel or other clean piece of cloth. I just use a regular old tea towel. Things you don’t want to use are pieces of cloth that smell heavily of fabric softener or detergent, the smell is going to transfer to your paneer. You also don’t want fabric that has been freshly dyed, I know this because I once used a nice green tea towel and ended up with a bright creamy green paneer. Very impressive visually.

Gently pour your curdled milk through the cloth lined colander and scrape out any curds that remain in the pan. Carefully fold the cloth over the curds so that you form a square of paneer folded in cloth. Place something heavy, like large can of tomatoes, or as in my case a pitcher of water (see image 2). Let the paneer cool and sit under the weight for half an hour or so, then unwrap (see image 3) and you’re all set.

Either cube the paneer and add directly to your preparation. Alternately, cube the paneer and then deep fry it until golden. A nice touch is, when you remove the paneer from the frying oil, let them soak briefly in a solution of hot water to which some salt and a good pinch of turmeric has been added. This gives the fried paneer a nice golden colour and takes away any excess oil.

Often I’ll save the whey from making the paneer to cook rice or in place or water in stewed dishes, it can add a bit of richness.

花生汤 -hua sheng tang, peanut soup, originally uploaded by mook elliott.

This soup, peanut soup, is delicious. In my minds eye it was kind of a turn off, images of bland peanut gruel, descriptions by fellow bloggers of “peanut snot”, and so forth… but it is a regional breakfast specialty of Fujian and so deserved a try.
I “found” this bowl outside of the small central market on Gulangyu. The vendor, and his oral hygiene challenged best friend, set up every morning as of early (6 ish) until about 10:00 am or so. His best friend provided the entertainment, yakking to customers, bossing people around, smoking, etc.. while the vendor dished up the soup. Sweet, quite watery, light, and great with a bit of yu tiao (the greasy donut stick in the picture) dunked in it. Certainly worth a try if you run across it and a nice light breakfast.

The most famous place to try peanut soup (Hua Sheng Tang) in Xiamen is “Huangzehe Hua Sheng Tang Dian” which is on Zhongshan lu and is a bustling cafeteria like establishment. I never managed to go there as whenever I stumbled by it was just too hot outside to contemplate peanut soup.
Unsurprisingly perhaps Hua Sheng Tang seems available in SIngapore (much Fujian/Hakka/Hokkien immmigration) with the addition of “yuan” or round rice dumplings.. yipee for Singapore (and Malaysia as well sometimes).

Well, well, what have we here? Oh, it’s competently made food that has been so incredibly toned down and under-seasoned it’s vying to redefine the word “bland”. The incredible deep fried cheese balls, so lauded by CityWeekend as the answer to deliciousness, were half decent. They wouldn’t hold a burnt match to a good malai kofta but none the less. Their dipping sauce, a tomato based form of insipidness, needed salt. Samosas, filled uniquely with potato and sorely in need of some spice and salt, came with the same sauce.

The parathas accompanying our mains needed to be cooked a few minutes more (and at 20 rmb for one must be a stunning money maker) and came with a dipping sauce (???). The beef curry was mildly spiced with cloves and overall quite good if not a massive portion. Same goes for a dish of sauteed spinach, bravely containing red chilies. Same goes for a dish of black lentils. Nepalese BBQ chicken (actually marinated and deep fried) was voted the winner, without sauce but tender and juicy nonetheless, although I’d personally vote for the black lentils and the spinach. Avoid the vanilla milk shake, a thin concoction of vanilla flavoured milk, but that’s something of a strange beverage choice for a Nepalese resto.

Would I go again? Yes. I’d order vegetarian, I’d order rice or puri, and I’d have a lassi. AND I’d sit at a proper table, cushions on the floor are less than comfortable. At 75rmb per person with a beer this is not the best deal in town, but it is something different from the standard Bangladeshi-run “chicken tikka” routine, and, if you can tempt them to turn up the spices (especially the salt) a bit, then it’s probably worthwhile. By the way I don’t blame them for turning down the spice, the place was full of French and a scattering of Germans, who, if you’ll excuse a vulgarly gross generalisation, don’t particularly like spice heavy or spicy food.

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