Yesterday’s goat milk paneer recipe may have ended on a cliff-hanger.

That final photo of the cheese cloth wrapped bundle of freshly drained cheese was only the beginning of the story. Paneer is a beautiful thing, and goat paneer has surprised me by being even better than cow paneer. It’s creamier and milder and a little less rubbery than my previous experiments. Or maybe I’m just getting better at making fresh cheese.

Anyway, I just wanted to add a follow-up note for those of you who needed to know what happened next.

As you may recall, this is where we left off:

My bundle of joy

This lovely little fellow was left to drain for three hours in the sink, squashed by a full kettle of water. If you want, you can catch the whey that drips out and use it in cooking. It’s good stuff.  After it drained, I molded it into a roughly formed rectangle, about 3 cm thick, and put in in the fridge overnight, still in the cheese cloth but kept safe from fridge smells and drips by a zip-loc baggie.

This is what I hauled out this morning and sliced up. It tastes awesome just as is, but quite plain and mild. You could always add chopped cilantro or chilies in the earlier stages after draining but before forming it into a rectangle.

The drained and squooshed paneer is cut into happy little cubes (I did this the day after the cheese-making)

I googled no-bake paneer recipes because I wanted something that could be used in Asia without an oven, preferably with just something wok-like. I found this recipe on Cooktease.com.

For grinding

• Green chilli – 3 no
• Lemon juice –1 table spoon
• Ginger garlic paste – 1 table spoon
• Thick curd – 2 table spoon
• Mint (Pudina) leaves – few
• Saffron food colour – pinch
• Sugar – 1/2 tea spoon
• Cumin seed (jeera) roasted and powdered -1 tea spoon
• Garam masala power – 1/2 tea spoon
• Turmeric powder – 1/4 tea spoon
• Red chilli powder – 1 tea spoon
• Salt – as per taste

Anyone who has ever watched me cook knows that recipes are more like hints or suggestions rather than, say, something to follow. I go for the gist of the recipe.

Things I didn’t have: green chilli, thick curd, mint, saffron, red chili powder, food processor for making a proper paste.

What I did instead: three spoonfuls of Hunan chilli paste from Chinatown (quite spicy- I like my heat furnace-like), left over lemon juice from the paneer (I ended up using about 2 tbs), a 1/2 cm thick disc of fresh ginger the diameter of a quarter (chopped very finely), one clove of super enormous elephant garlic (equivalent to about 1/3 of an average head) also minced super fine, freshly ground cumin, some garam masala powder that I’d bought on a spice farm in Goa years ago but never opened (still fresh smelling), turmeric and sea salt. I just mixed all of these together instead of making a paste.

I’ll show you what I did.

I had googled a recipe but didn’t have half the ingredients so I improvised

Marinade close up!

In a wok or a tava, on a low heat (I had it on 3 for electric), with a blorp of oil, fry gently until golden brown on at least two or three sides, if not four or more (if actually cubed and able to balance)

The recipe had called for a spice paste but I just chopped everything up. It worked fine.

Breakfast of champions!

The final product is marvellous: soft, goaty, gentle, creamy inside with a pan-fried golden outside that is spicy and garlicky and gingery and just fried-crusty enough to give it a lovely textural contrast. I think I got about 17 or 18 cubes out of that 2 liter jug of goat milk and we’ve eaten all but three pieces already. I called it breakfast but, damn, I’d eat it instead of pop corn during a film or as a side dish or for anything really.