Quite simply because you can cook with it!
Here is my Indian paneer (Indian cheese) recipe that I made for lunch. I had two small bottles of milk which my son sniffed and said, ‘Mum, it’s gone off!’ and proceeded to tip one down the sink. I managed to stop him in time.
My family never used shop bought paneer but paneer is now widely available outside India. Even in India, you can buy commercially made paneer. The commercially made paneer is quite hard and strangely enough softens up during cooking. If the food goes cold, the paneer goes hard again! Apparently paneer doesn’t like being refrigerated or being cold, but I am guessing there must be other ingredients in the commercial product to keep it fresh that make it behave in that way. Anyway, the homemade version is very easy to make and tastes lovely. It doesn’t go hard, soft, hard! And there is no plastic waste.
I took the milk and boiled it, squeezing a few drops of lemon juice in the pan with it. Soon, the milk had curdled up. Then I tipped the entire thing on to bowl covered with a fine cotton cloth and the liquid (called whey) drained away into the bowl, leaving me with the paneer on the cloth. I brought the ends of the cloth together and squeezed it tightly. The fresh paneer was ready.
I dry fried teaspoon each of cumin and coriander, and couple of cloves and inch cinnamon stick and a tiny piece of red chilly in a wok. After a minute, I took the wok off the stove and crushed all the spices using a pestle. Then I put a table spoon of rapeseed oil and put the paneer in the wok along with a teaspoon of turmeric and two teaspoons of dry ginger (fresh ginger is very nice but since I am trying to use up all my dried ginger, I used that). One tablespoon of dried mango powder and salt to taste. I fried this mixture for about five minutes.
I added half a cup of water and one cup of frozen peas. I also added a tablespoon of tinned tomatoes. After about 10 minutes, the paneer dish was ready. And it was so tasty! (The photo below was taken on another day when I decided to cut up the paneer pieces so that it cooked quicker. It was even tastier as the flavour of the sauce had penetrated the paneer more)
What of the whey left behind?
Whey is full of protein and dried whey is used by people wanting to build muscles. It is believed that it flushes out the kidneys according to Ayurvedic beliefs ( but I don’t know if that has been scientifically tested yet). But it seems stupid to throw it away! It has a pleasant enough taste, especially if lemon juice is added (some also add honey) but personally I don’t like it. So I used it to make the chapati (Indian bread), using the whey instead of water to make the dough. And that turned out to be a hit too. Certainly a zero waste lunch!
You can also make Western ‘sourdough’ bread with it. I leave the dough to rise overnight instead of one hour- that’s the difference. Otherwise, use your usual recipe and instead of water and yeast, use the whey.
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