Paneer/Cottage Cheese-how to prepare from scratch

Am in Germany and am very bad in Deutsche but then i have not given up.Am trying to learn it as much as possible. Its a sea and am only trying take  few plunges down the water. Anyways Paneer what do they call it in Deutsche- googled and found Paneer- Paneer kaase but that was quite different from what we use, so Finally i have to learn the art of preparing paneer by myself. Previously i thought of it as tiresome difficult process but then its just a child play. So my search of paneer has finally settled with me preparing itself all the time. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

• Milk- 1 ltr
• lemon salt water/citric acid- 1.5 TSP or else lime juice- 2 TSP
• Large sieve
• Muslin cloth
• Cold water- 1 ltr
• Heavy weight

Method:

• Boil the milk
• As soon as it comes to boil add the lemon salt water and keep on stirring
• Once water separates turn off the heat
• Place the muslin cloth over the sieve and drain the milk over it
• Cheese will settle over the muslin cloth and water will drain off.
• Now pour the cold water so as to remove the sourness from it. squeeze to drain remaining water.
• Make a desired shape of the cheese say round or rectangular block and then tightly tie the muslin cloth squeezing out extra left water .
• Put a heavy weight over the tied cheese and keep it aside for 3 hours.

Paneer is now ready to use. Remove the cloth and you will get  soft spongy entact paneer block.

Have a happy cooking :-)

By: Sushmita Pandit