Palak Paneer (and how to make paneer)

I made cheese! Wohoo! I love activities where in cooking where i can make the components that you're so used to buying ready made. It adds another level to the care and control you have over a dish. And in this case, paneer is so cheap and so easy to make, I'm sure it, or other home made cheeses, will appear in other recipes down the line.

Palak Paneer is a vegetarian curry using paneer instead of meat, and with spinach as the basis for the sauce. Paneer has a taste and texture similar to firm ricotta (in fact this whole dish rings of cannelloni filling to me); as such, it acts in this dish as a conveyor of the sauce's flavor rather than as a distinct flavoring element of its own.

Happy cheese making!

Grilled Vegetable and Haloumi Salad

Summertime, and i can feel a theme coming on! With long work hours, late sunlight, and back to cooking for one, salads are becoming an imperative this summer season! To me, a good salad is about fresh ingredients, with one highlight yummy addition. That addition might be cheese, it might be bread, it might be meat. It doesn't matter, but it's the drawcard of the dish to me! In this instance it's haloumi.

For the first few times i tried to make grilled haloumi i was so disappointed. Gone was the melty, salty goodness i'd experienced at Greek restaurants, and in it's place was a squeaky (yes squeaky!!) rubbery mass. The key is in long cooking; really cook your haloumi until it's starting to lose it's shape. If it's still a nice brick, she ain't ready yet!

Broccoli Soup with Chevre

After a couple of luxurious soups for my weekly lunches i decided to cut back, go back to basics, and make a nice, healthy soup for this week's lunches. But... well i couldn't help myself.

Don't get me wrong, this soup REALLY is as simple as they come. Excluding salt and water, this soup is comprised of just two ingredients: broccoli and goats cheese.

Chevre is the French word for goat, and logically, chevre refers in Australia as a type of goats cheese. Rich and creamy, ash covered chevre adds a very distinct note to this dish and is available at any good delicatessen.

This dish is derived from a youtube video i watched from the venerable and terrifying Gordon Ramsey. His logic is sound: why should a broccoli soup need to be tainted and overdone with stocks and creams? He lets the broccoli speak to itself, and the goatiness of the cheese come through as a faint flavor throughout. I agree- to a point. This soup is a wonderful starter or palate cleanser, but it lacks the 'oomph' required to be a main course.

My Caprese Salad

I've called this 'My Caprese Salad' becuase i have no idea how authentic this salad is. I made this salad once when i bought all of the ingredients for a bruscetta only to find that the ciabatta bread had mold spores on it. 

Regardless, this is my favorite salad. I could eat it every day; it combined my favorite elements of Italian cuisine: basil, olive oil, and tomatoes. And it's dead easy to make. 

Note: This salad hinges on every ingredient. Only buy the best vine ripened tomatoes, and forget about this salad in winter. The better the mozarella the better .

Ingredients: (per serve)

• 1 tomato
• 1/2 a large Buffalo Mozarella ball
• 1 handful basil
• 1/4 a red onion
• 1 clove garlic
• Extra virgin olive oil
  
• Salt
• Pepper

Method:

Chop the basil and add to a mortar and pestle with the garlic, a pinch of salt and a teason of olive oil. Grind into a paste.

Slice the mozarella and tomato into 5mm thick pieces. 

Very thinly shave the onion into rings.

Layer the ingredients on a plate as follows: tomato, mozarella, dot of basil, onion.

Repeat until all ingredients are on plate

Season with pepper and a dash of olive oil over the top. 

Yum!!

Blissful Cheese Blintz

A blintz is simply a type of crepe of mostly Russian origin. The style that i describe in the recipe below is probably the most common in Australia; you can get them at Pancake Parlour! This one is for desserts, however blini can also be filled with savoury fillings as a main or entree. My favorite thing about these is their yummy snack size portability!! Chuck them in the freezer and pull them out as you need them. Yum!

The Blintz Crepe

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Butter

Method:

Combine all of of the ingredients except the butter and whisk until well combined. Place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Remove, and test consistency. You are looking for a very runny pancake batter; if you need to thin it out at at time, gradually add more milk and stir.

Heat a frying pan to a medium heat and then run the pan with some butter. Pour in approximately one ladel full of batter and tilt the pan so that the batter spreads out to be as thin as possible. 

Within about one minute, the blintz should no longer look glossy, and may be rising slightly off the pan at it's edges. When this happens, slide a spatula under the crepe and flip and cook for a further 20 seconds. Then remove the blintz and place on a plate with  a towel over the top. Repeat for the remaining blini.

Note: It's a given that the first blintz or two will not turn out very well. This might be because the pan is too hot, it might be because the batter is too thick; even if you get all of these right, the first blintz is never the best.

The Filling

Ingredients

• 500gm ricotta or cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• Zest of 2 lemons
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1/3 cup icing sugar

Method

Simply combine all of the above ingredients in a bowl any way you know how!

The Folding and Cooking

Place around 2 tablespoons of the filling in the centre of the blintz crepe.

Fold the top of the crepe into the middle, on top of the filling.

Fold the bottom of the crepe into the middle, above the other end of the crepe

Repeat for left and right as per the picture below. 

Place in a baking dish with the folds down and cook for 20 minutes at 180 degrees; or place in an oiled pan, folded side down until the side browns, then flip and repeat for the other side.

Dust with icing sugar and serve with a wedge of lemon and some berries. The inside should be gooey. I personally prefer them at room temperature where the filling has thickened a little bit.