Queso blanco, or Paneer (Panir)

Over on the sausage-making forum someone asked for suggestions of a cheese related activity to do with a group of school kids that wouldn't break the bank. I immediately thought of Paneer, an Indian vegetarian cheese - or the cheese your granny made out of sour milk!

That said, I've only ever made it from non-homogenised milk, which works out a tad expensive 'cos those large cheap plastic containers of milk in the supermarkets are invariably homogenised.

Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained: the investment of a whole £1 coin got me 2 litres of ALDI's best full-fat milk.

To make the cheese is simplicity itself: put the milk into a pan and bring it to the boil stirring regularly so that the milk doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Just before it boils (or at least when it's over 80°C) add a couple of lemons worth of lemon juice or about the same amount of white vinegar. Give it a quick stir then leave it for a couple of minutes or so. The milk should have split into white curds and a watery light-green/yellow/clear whey - if it hasn't, boil it back up and add some more lemon or vinegar. Pour the whole lot into a cloth lined colander and run it under cold water to cool it, then leave it to drain:

...you can save the whey to use in scones or soda bread if you want.

That's basically it - you can go on to wrap the cheese up and press it (I did, under a stone mortar), you can add salt, herbs, spices etc to it, or you can even use it for sweet puddings or have it dribbled with honey. If you press it for a couple or three hours, you can cube it or mould it into balls. Then, unlike virtually all other cheeses, it will fry without melting; it's great in Mattar Paneer (Panir).

Phil's Friday Tip

Don't mistake the soy sauce for the vinegar when you're making chicken fried rice! Yuk!

Nettle Soup

Mention something for nothing and my eyes generally light up - that's how I came to be making nettle soup.

The first thing to do is persuade someone to pick a bowl of young nettle tops for you. This is the best way I've found of doing it without getting stung! Luckily, Pauline eventually gave in and obliged.

Wash the nettles.

Meanwhile peel and chop a potato, onion and optionally, a little celery and a garlic clove.

Cook all the ingredients except the nettles in a little oil for about 5 minutes before adding a pint of stock or water. Don't let the veg colour.

Simmer for about 10 - 15 minutes until the potatoes are soft then add the nettles. They'll cook down in no time

Cook for about a further 3 minutes and then allow to cool slightly before liquidising the soup.

The 'finished' soup.

When I say finished, well I guess that depends on whether you like nettle soup. Pauline, my resident food critic (and wife) tasted it and, drawing on years of eloquence, declared: "That's 'Orrible!". Doh! back to the drawing chopping board.

Adding a couple of sprigs worth of mint leaves...

...and a dollop of double cream...

...has produced a soup that's a lot more palatable and very reminiscent of pea and mint.

Cassoulet

It says it all really. In England we eat this:

In France they have this:

Now, not wishing to come over as a food snob (albeit I am!) I have to admit to having Heinz Beans & Sausage towards the top of my "So bad they're good" list! However, I draw the line at this cheaper copy of the Heinz rubbish. It reminds me of Humphrey Bogart's character, Rick in Casablanca talking of Ugarte (Peter lorre): "I don't mind a parasite... ...I object to a cut-price one!"

Anyway, back to the Cassoulet. Over the past few weeks I've made the meat ingredients: Ventrèche Bacon, Toulouse and garlic sausage and Confit Duck Legs, so it was just a case of finding a good recipe. I settled on this cassoulet recipe - one that fellow sausage maker Ian Hoare from Forgès in the Limousin recommends. I made a half quantity and it was more than enough for four people - the left-overs were great on toast the next day. I didn't have any pork rind to hand so left this out.

My only regret is that, as is traditional, I pushed the brown crust that forms during the cooking back down into the beans with a wooden spoon six times which broke the pieces of pork and duck up more than I would have liked.

The recipe is:

Cassoulet De Castelnaudary

100gm white haricot beans; pre-soaked overnight
1 med onion; stuck with a clove
1 stalk celery; washed
50 g carrots; peeled & quartered
1½ tablespoon tomato puree
500gm Ventrèche, salt belly of pork; remove rind and keep
2 tablespoon duck fat; from confit
2 legs Confit Duck Legs
350gm Lautrec sausages
bouquet garni
1 litre stock

2 cloves garlic; chopped together with 25 g fat from raw ham; chopped, and 1 shallot; chopped
salt and black pepper

Boil the beans in plenty of water for 10 minutes then drain. Boil the stock and add the beans, garlic, ham fat, shallot, tomato puree, all the veg and the bouquet garni, in fact everything but the duck fat, salt and meat. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer. Cut the Ventrèche and sausage into large chunks and separate the duck thigh from the drumsticks. I also removed the duck bones. Brown the meats in the duck fat and set aside the sausage and confit of duck. Add the Ventrèche to the beans and simmer until the beans are nice and soft (about 1½ hours).

Preheat the oven to 160°C. Layer the beans and meat (except the confit) into a casserole with beans on the top and bottom. Cook for an hour before increasing the temperature to 170°C, adding the confit and cooking for a further hour uncovered. When a crust forms push it gently back into the bulk. If it dries out add some boiling water to keep it moist.

Nice as it is prepared this traditional way, it would also be superb with the confit duck leg roast or fried separately and served on top of the beans.

Confit Duck Legs

Those who've been following the last few projects can probably see where this will end up. I've made Ventrèche, a Gascon bacon, along with Toulouse Sausage. Now I'm making Confit Duck. It don't take a genius to work out that sooner or later there'll be a recipe for Cassoulet!

There's method in my madness, but you've got to go back to just before Christmas before it becomes clear (well as clear as mud!). You see, it started with some ducks!

Let me explain - I know that I pride myself on supporting local food producers, but when just before Christmas I saw this:

Well really, what would you do? I'm no hero, I did the same! So now we've got a freezer full of ducks.

All that was left for me to do was convince Pauline to eat them!

I thought I'd take a two pronged approach - serving just the breast at one meal and the confit leg in a cassoulet at another. We've had tinned cassoulet in France so she's used to it. It would just be the inclusion of duck that would be new as it doesn't feature in products at the cheaper end of the range. (Blimey, I've just looked a tinned cassoulet online - some of it's over a tenner a time!) Anyway, back to the duck. I cut it into pieces:

Then salted the legs overnight with garlic, thyme, and 2gm sea salt per 100gm of meat.

In the meantime I roasted the duck carcass to render it's fat.

It was this, along with some bought duck fat, that the duck (after it had been rinsed of the herbs and salt) was cooked in the following day. I shall try and avoid buying duck fat in future; it's dearer than the duck! Anyway, the legs sat submerged in the fat at 100°C for about 4 hours. I'm now storing it for a few days 'to mature' before I use it for cassoulet.

And, the breasts? Well, this snapshot doesn't do justice to the duck with cherry sauce looking, as it does, like a dog's dinner:

Lomo embuchado

It seems an age since I started this last batch of cures, although it's only just over 6 weeks - not long when air drying meat. However, the Lomo that was cased for drying in late February, dried more quickly that I expected and has been ready for a while.

To recap, I started by cutting the 'eye' from a loin of pork (It's the meaty bit that you get in a pork chop!):

It was dry cured in a vacuum bag with Spanish smoked paprika, black pepper and garlic for a couple of weeks:

The cured Lomo was rinsed and then dried overnight in the fridge...

...before being cased in a large collagen casing and tied:

...and there's more! Click here »

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