grilled cheese sandwich heaven

y'alls, i love grilled cheese sandwiches. i would say they are probably my all time number one favorite food. number two i guess. i know when you were a kid is the cool thing to say was that your favorite food is pizza but i would always be like, well, my favorite food is french bread with gravy but my second favorite food is grilled cheese. recipe for poulet farci al' ail may be forthcoming at some point, the dish that creates the gravy that creates the french bread with gravy that owns my heart. but for now: the best grilled cheese.

usually i make toasted cheese, which is kind of cheating, but it makes me feel like it might be "healthy" or at least healthy enough to count as one of those quick lunches or late night dinners that you stand over the stove eating. my toaster oven, though, is back at the ranch so i have been forced to conquer my fears of pan-fried grilled cheese: these sandwiches usually end up burnt or flabby with butter or half cold.

no more. the answer is mayonnaise. do you know this trick? i don't know how it entered my brain but i am glad it did.

spread a thin layer of mayo on the outside of the bread so you don't need to put butter in the pan which can separate or burn or whatever. medium heat until the bread browns and the cheese melts. when the cheese melts, flip it. boom. perfect crispy crust, no burning, doesn't really taste like mayo (especially if you spread mustard or chutney on the inside of your sandwich. yummm.)

the past two sandwiches, mozzarella on potato bread, have been simply perfect. in a succulent garden in the shade with a cat making happy sounds: you better believe it.

palak paneer

Having just read bell hooks for the last few hours, I worry that cooking all these fake-o versions of international food is just "privileged acting out for anti-racist while folks." Am I over-worrying this? Oh dear. So take this recipe with this hyper-self-conscious grad student's apologies and a grain of salt. I didn't use the right spices, and I got the basic idea from my new internet friend, Manjula. Anyway, it was delicious and you should try it; imagine the sheer joy of using homemade cheese.

A bag of frozen spinach, thawed
Frozen peas, if you have them (thawed)
Half an onion, minced
A cup or two of paneer cheese, cut into cubes and fried in oil
A small container of Greek yogurt
About 3 tsp garam masala + more cumin, if you want
Pinch of salt
Chile powder or red pepper flakes to taste
2 cloves garlic, minced
About an inch of ginger, minced

--Fry your cheese and set aside.
--Now cook the onion until it is translucent, and add the spinach and spices and garlic and ginger. Cook until dark green and wilted. Taste to make sure the spices seem ok.
--Add the paneer and at the last minute, stir in the yogurt.

Chow down.

ricotta

Homestead dream complete! Remember the last year and a half when all I wanted to talk about was how plan B was to learn to make cheese on a mountain in New Hampshire? But I never did it? Then when I pined for classes at the cheesemaking institute at UVM that were about a thousand dollars above my budget? Those days are over.

As the internet testifies, making your own fresh cheese is pretty much the easiest thing in the world. All you need is some cheesecloth or old tights and a big container of milk. Here's for ricotta-- paneer and queso blanco are basically the same thing but unsalted and strained a bit more.

So here we go. Take half a gallon of pasteurized (not ultra pasteurized) whole milk and put it in a pot to boil. You want some space on top in case it boils and starts to foam, which happened one time I made this cheese but not the other. Enh. Anyway, if your pots are too small then just scale the "recipe" down accordingly.

Ok, when the milk is just thinking about boiling softly, stir in a tablespoon of salt and three tablespoons of lemon juice. Turn the heat down until the cheese starts to form curds. Yum, cheese curds! Don't stir, just let the milk simmer for 5 more minutes or so until the curds really separate and you can see the whey, which is watery and yellow.

Line a colander with cheesecloth and strain the cheese, pouring some cold water over the top to cool the curds and rinse off some of the lemon flavor. For soft ricotta, just a few minutes in the colander is plenty. For a firmer cheese that you can cut into blocks or crumble into tacos or what have you, tie up the cheesecloth and let it hang from your faucet for an hour or so.

Recipe for my bootleg palak paneer to follow, ricotta is delicious all by itself... or with some jam or honey.

Happy halloween, everybody!