A couple of years back I cooked Indian food for a Super Bowl party we hosted and served a number of different southern and northern dishes. (Perhaps a little odd given that my parents were Okies from Muskogee, but Dad was a Marine and both parents were adventurous when it came to cuisine.  I grew up exposed to a lot of different cuisines, especially various USA regional foods and Pacific Rim foods.)  My personal favorite dish at the party was palak paneer, which is pureed and curried spinach with paneer cheese.  I found the cheese at a local Indian food market and made the curried puree from fresh spinach, curry spices and ordinary Land-O-Lakes butter.  Two of our guests were from North India and they also particularly liked the palak paneer I had made.

Last year I wanted to make the dish again but the market was temporarily out of paneer.  I wondered how hard is it to make paneer?  A Google search later showed that it is quite simple and does not require special equipment or ingredients.  Really?  I wondered how hard is it to make other cheeses?  Another Google search showed that while most cheeses require “culture” (i.e. some sort of beneficial bacteria) and rennet, several do not require any special equipment.

Of course I dived in, ordering mesophillic bacteria and rennet from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company and picking up some cloths from Walmart that approximated butter muslin.  By the way, I am very happy with everything I have gotten from New England Cheese Making.  Ricki is awesome and you will really enjoy her site.  Lots of great information and recipes there.

In short order I made cream cheese based on a recipe I found on some website.  It was amazing!  Much better than any cream cheese I have ever had! I love a little cream cheese in the morning on whole grain toast or better yet on toasted Whole Foods’ Seeduction rolls.  I have a friend at work who at one time baked cheesecake professionally and I made her several different cream cheeses to experiment with.  (Sounds like another topic for a post.)

For anyone wanting to start making cheese I recommend starting with cream cheese, or quark if you are worried about the fat level in cream.  Quark is essentially low fat cream cheese and I have made it from 2% milk.   It is great by itself and makes a great dip if you add seasonings or chopped herbs or chopped olives.  The only special ingredient you need is the culture but in a pinch you can use some active yogurt instead of specially ordering packaged bacteria.

Since March of 2010, I have made several soft cheeses like cream cheese and quark, and several firm cheeses as well.  I’ll save the part about my first firm cheese for another post.  For some reason I have not gotten back to the idea of making paneer yet.

So many cheeses, so little time!