Lola and I attempted to make paneer cheese today for the first time. Paneer is a fresh farmers cheese used in Indian cuisine. It was very easy and had only 2 ingredients...milk & lemon juice (or another acid, like lime juice or whey from a previous batch of paneer).
We heated the milk gently, then added the lemon juice. The acid makes the milk curdle and then we did our best to separate the curds from the whey. The curds can later be pressed and formed into a block.
I figured we couldn't go wrong, but somehow, we did. I later learned that we shouldn't have used ultra-pasteurized milk as it does not curd very well. Our milk curds were so small that it was difficult to drain the whey.
We did manage to salvage the cheese by just adding some salt and dill and blending it into a soft spreadable farmers cheese. It was delicious so it was ok that it didn't really turn out the way we expected.
