Caprese Salad is one of favorite Italian Salads of my daughter, and also quite commonly found at most Italian Restaurants. The best Caprese Salad we recently had was at EUNO, Italian Restaurant in Boston, referred to us by our new tenant. I have yet to be able to get the highly green olive oil that looked so colorful against the white of mozzarella cheese! Since I wanted to avoid cheese, I decided to try this with Paneer, and I am pleasantly surprised with the results!
A fancy item for lunch for sure, when you are observing 10 day Jain Paryushan and are not able to consume any green vegetables and root! During this 10 day period, I was in the mood of trying all sorts of cuisine which would reduce the pinch felt by non-consumption of green vegetables. Few of the dishes included pongal rice, caprese salad, pasta with alfredo sauce, rava idli, sabudana wada, gatte ki sabji, chana dal rice, moong puri! This variety of cuisine helped in making the school lunch palatable as well as enable us to follow the Paryushan easily.
While doing some research on Paneer and Cheese – I came across the benefits of eating Paneer over Cheese, specially if you want to lose some weight and you would also like to avoid excess sodium in case of hypertension. What is interesting is also a website listing all Cheese brands and their products and identifying if they are vegetarian or not. Cheese can be manufactured with rennet sourced from calf stomach, and hence I found this website quite helpful to cross check if the cheese is vegetarian or not at http://cheese.joyousliving.com/CheeseListBrand.aspx I often use Amul cheese, sourced from India, and Horizon Organic cheese for my dishes.
Caprese Salad with Paneer Cottage Cheese is extremely easy!! Making Paneer at home is a simple job! Just boil the milk, when it boils over, add lemon juice, heat for a couple of minutes, till whey is separated, and then strain and cool! So give this salad a shot at home, as it is simply refreshing and cooling, and you will enjoy the crunchy tomatoes against the soft paneer cheese, soaked in olive oil and dried basil leaves. A sure way to have protein consumption that is colorful, quick and easy!
And lastly to my readers, it is my turn to say Micchami Dukkadam,(which means “please forgive, me” as a Jain follower would say) for not blogging for a long time- reason being international travelling over the summer!
Bon Appetit!!
Recipe makes 3 servings
Prep time 20 min
Chilling time : 2-3 hours
Ingredients
- 1/2 gallon of whole milk
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 vine tomatoes
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- salt to taste
- dried basil leaves or fresh basil leaves
- Butter/ghee to grease the utensil
Method
- Grease the pan with butter/ghee if not using a non-stick utensil
- Boil the milk on medium flame
- When the milk boils over, add lemon juice.
- Leave it on the heat for couple of minutes till whey separates and you see liquid water separated.
- Strain this liquid and leave the paneer cottage cheese in it for about half an hour to cool.
- Once it cools down, spread the paneer cottage cheese in a flat dish and sprinkle some salt in it.
- Smoothen the paneer with your palm of hand for a few minutes.
- And roll it in a oblong dough shape.
- Cover it with a wet cloth and chill for about 2-3 hours.
- Slice the chilled paneer into 1/2 inch slices, using a serrated knife.
- Slice the tomatoes into 1/2 inch slices.
- Lay the tomatoes and paneer slices alterantivley.
- Mix salt to taste in the olive oil.
- Drizzle oil around and over the tomatoes and paneer cottage cheese slices.
- Sprinkle dried/fresh basil leaves.
- Serve as a salad or an appetizer.
Tips
When slicing the paneer, go forward backward motion gently , rather than one strong cut. This will have less crumbles chipping off the paneer log. Make sure the tomatoes are well chilled, before slicing, Tastes best when freshly assembled!
Instinct Factor
Nothing much left to instinct except, slicing thick or thin! Alterante this with your variety of cheese!
Feel Factor
Aren’t you happy to create a dish of Caprese Salad with Paneer Cottage Cheese that has a lot of oomph factor and surprise your family and friends! An extremely healthy, colorful, easy and filling salad without much effort. Enjoy this with Pasta in white sauce or spinach based sauce. An item to be included in your diet, specially if you are lacking vitamin B12, a common deficiency among vegetarian people.
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