Chickpea salad

Can I just say that I love chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans)?  They are great in hummus, in soups, and in a cold chickpea salad.  Now, I need to go on record to say that I hate macaroni salads, chicken salads, and 3/4 of potato salads.  I'm not sure why exactly but something about them just grosses me out.  Maybe it's the ice cold mayonnaise mixed with cold veggies. Chickpea salad, however, is delicious. And mayo free.

I found several recipes online, and finally decided upon this one, but then changed it up anyway. I'm wacky like that.

Ingredients

2 15-oz cans of chickpeas (usually found with the other beans but my local grocery had them with the canned vegetables...no idea why)

2 cups diced English cucumber (the English kind are usually wrapped in plastic wrap and have less seeds. If you can't find it, just use a regular cucumber and scoop out some of the seeds before chopping)

1 cup diced tomatoes, seeded (seeded means squeezing out all the juice and seeds)

1/2 of a red bell pepper, finely chopped

3/4 cup finely diced red onion

1/2 cup fresh cilantro, minced

2-3 tablespoons minced basil (I no longer have fresh, as my plant died from the frost. So I had to use dried basil. I used about 2 teaspoons)

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

4 teaspoons rice vinegar

4-5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

freshly ground black pepper

Rinse and drain chickpeas. In a medium bowl, stir together the cucumber, tomato, red bell pepper, red onion, and herbs. Carefully stir in the chickpeas.

In a small bowl, mash together the garlic and salt. Whisk in the lemon juice, mustard, vinegar and olive oil. Season to taste with pepper. Toss the dressing into the chickpeas and vegetables. Let it sit for at least an hour in the refrigerator (mine sat overnight). Give it one final toss before serving.

Paneer cheese

My husband, Joe, has made mozzarella cheese a few times now.  It turns out that it's kind of a particular process with several steps, and you really have to be careful about measurement of ingredients and temperature.  It also can be more challenging to try to find citric acid powder and rennet tablets.

So imagine my delight when paneer was so easy to make in comparison!  Paneer is a white, hard cheese found in many Indian dishes. It kind of looks like tofu cubes in some of the curries it's made in, except, well, it tastes like cheese!  You can also pan fry paneer (similar to tofu) if you want it browned.

So here we are, to the easiest cheese recipe ever!

Ingredients:

1/2 gallon of milk (you can use whole milk, but I used 2%. Next time I may try 1%.  They say that skim milk is not recommended though)

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (I think that fresh squeezed works best. If you choose to use the bottled stuff, you may have to play around with the recipe a bit)

Directions:

Heat the 1/2 gallon of milk in a saucepan over medium heat.  Be sure to stir it often, so you don't burn the milk on the bottom.  When it finally comes to a good boil, remove it from the heat and pour in the lemon juice.

Gently stir the lemon juice in.  It will start to curdle the milk immediately, and separate it into curds and whey.  Gently stir for a bit, and then let it sit for 5-10 minutes.

Gently stir once more.  You should have a lot of curds now!  Put a double layer of cheesecloth over a fine mesh strainer and place them both over a bowl large enough to hold all of the whey liquid.  Carefully pour the curds and whey from the saucepan into the cheesecloth.  Squeeze all of the liquid from the cheesecloth that you can.  Either toss the whey or use it another recipe (I used it the next day to make roti bread).

Take your curds in the cheesecloth and gently rinse over the sink with tap water.  Squeeze to get all the liquid out, and then put the cheesecloth and strainer back over the bowl and let it sit a few minutes.  I put a paper towel and a heavy can of beans over top to help force liquid through.

Then, put some paper towels on a dinner plate, put your cheesecloth and curds on top, and cover with some more paper towels.  Place another dinner plate on top, and then on top of that, some heavy canned goods (I used a big jar of spaghetti sauce and 4 cans of beans).  Leave it out like this for 1-2 hours, then wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate.  

freshly made paneer!

You can then use the paneer in your favorite paneer recipes.  One of my faves is palak paneer!