Romanian food, part 2

The Standard Cheese Plate

This basic combination was repeated many times in our trip to Romania, most memorably at a sheepfold party where we walked up (and staggered down, many glasses of palinka later) a steep hill to the shepherd's worksite, where they make the daily fresh cheese, feed the hogs, and milk the cows before dispersing again to the pastures with their flocks and enormous mountain dogs.

The more textured cheese is caş, made daily from sheep's milk. It is tangy and moist, with a flavor like dry cottage cheese. The more uniform looking cheese is urda, made from the liquid left after the caş solidifies--the same basic process used for ricotta. Like ricotta it is very mild, but more solid and richer. Sometimes it is made from a combination of sheep and goat's milk. Either way, It's wonderful stuff, served at all meals and also used to stuff savory pastries such as plăcintă, a filled bread that also has dill.

Parsley and smoked pork fat round out the presentation.

I Found a Local Feta

The farm store is right next door to this viewing room.

I stopped by Appel Farms on Northwest Road last week to buy some cheeses for a birthday potluck. (Happy 55th to Lee Becker!). Appel is best known for their nationally marketed quark, and I’ve mentioned their paneer and gouda, but they also have several varieties that rarely show up in stores.

My favorite new cheesy acquaintance there was the feta with olives. Inspired by my dwindling bank account plus a bit of carbon-footprint consciousness, I’ve been looking for a reasonably priced local feta, and Appel has it. (A bonus for me is that the farm is one of my routes home from work; no extra driving) Somehow I’ve never warmed to most of the flavored feta mixtures. What I really like best is the Mt. Viko sheep/goat combo feta from Greece that they sell at the Co-op. But one of Appel’s offerings comes with big olive slices--mostly green ones--in the cows-milk feta blocks. Both texture and taste work wonderfully together, and it looks good too. At $5.50/lb., it’s well worth a try.

When you make your own cheese in small batches, as Appel does, you can try out any whimsical flavor that may cross your mind. That’s the best explanation I can think of for another variety I didn’t buy for the party: chocolate-chip cheddar. I tried it. It wasn’t awful, but I don’t get the point. I asked the young saleswoman where the idea had come from, and she rolled her eyes. “It’s a novelty,” was all she said. A bit of Googling turned up the news that a British cheesemaker markets chocolate-chip cheddar as an aphrodisiac, but do we really want to take culinary, or erotic, advice from the culture that brought us the Deep-Fried Mars Bar and French Fries combo? Appel’s black pepper cheddar is a better bet.

If your taste in feta runs to geopolitics, check out the debate over feta's culture of origin that is straining relations in the European Economic Community: instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/.../hac27/Europe.html

Much closer to home, I highly recommend this website for regional cheese enthusiasts: http://pnwcheese.typepad.com/cheese/cheese_producers/index.html

NW Washington Cheese: Paneer Edition

I'm guessing paneer (also spelled panir) is the least-known of the artisanal cheeses made in Northwest Washington. It's definitely one of the least expensive, and it's closely tied to our changing demographics, being a kitchen staple in many South Asian households. Appel Farms near Ferndale, http://www.appel-farms.com/, began making it around the time members of the Sikh community that has long farmed in the lower Fraser Valley began moving south into Whatcom County, where farmland was less expensive, soon to be joined by recent immigrants from India.

Paneer is an uncultured, unaged, quickly made fresh cheese. In the Appel Farms version it's made with milk from their 300-head herd. (That's the basic definition of artisanal cheese, by the way, that it's made on the farm with milk from that farm.) The only other ingredient is vinegar. In India, lemon juice and yogurt generally substitutes for the vinegar.

If you think cottage cheese doesn't have much taste, I have to tell you, paneer has less. It basically looks and tastes like solidified milk. If you already like bland foods, there you have a high-protein, easily digestible, locally produced treat. The Appel Farms website has instructions for sautéing, baking and grilling it with minimal additions. My tastes are less subtle--though I prefer to think more adventurous--and I value paneer for its role as a sponge (and a source of protein) to soak up the complex flavors in dals and curries.

Like the better known Greek Cypriot halloumi, and Mexican panela (which uses the Greek technique), panir doesn't melt when cooked, at least not when cooked properly. That makes it a useful visual and textural contrast in Indian vegetarian dishes, such as the Hindu staple, Palak Paneer.

I'm jumping the gun for Whatcom locavores with this recipe, since overwintered spinach won't get going in our gardens until we get a few warmer days, but here it is anyway. To me this combines creamy comfort with a touch of excitement. Isn't that what we want in life?

Palak Paneer
Ingredients
6 tablespoons vegetable oil (Indian cooking is one of the few times I branch out from olive
oil to a milder flavored type like canola; the absolute best taste is from ghee)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger root
2 chiles (Adjust the type and firepower to your taste; I like dried serranos, but my Hindu cookbook recommends fresh jalapenos.)
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 teaspoons cumin (I grind my own because the whole seeds keep their flavor longer and because I like to.)
1 teaspoon ground coriander (Same as above, plus you can toss surplus seeds in the garden and then you can have your own cilantro/coriander. A caveat, though. The plants grown from kitchen coriander are likely to race to flower and seed in zip time. For a good supply of cilantro leaves, you need the non-bolting types bred for leaf production.)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 cup soy milk*
3 pounds fresh spinach leaves, or 2 pounds frozen, chopped fine (If you are using frozen, thaw it and press out extra moisture before adding to the pan.)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
4 sprigs fresh cilantro leaves
8 ounces paneer in 1/2-inch cubes
salt to taste

*Traditional recipes use mild yogurt or heavy cream; soy milk provides that same rich taste without loading up the cholesterol, since we're already going with whole milk cheese. I'm an old foodie so I have to watch these things. Take your choice.

Instructions
In a large saucepan heat 3 tablespoons of oil and sauté the garlic, 1/2 tablespoon of ginger, chiles and onion slowly until golden brown. Mix in the cumin, coriander, turmeric, and soy milk. Add the spinach, handfuls at a time until it is cooked down, about 15 minutes total. The mixture should have the consistency of gravy. Cook a little longer if it isn't there yet.

Add the tomato paste, the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of ginger, and cilantro and keep on low while you prepare the cheese. In a medium frying pan, heat the remaining oil over medium heat, and fry the paneer cubes until their surface is browned. Drain and add to spinach. Cook for 10 minutes on low heat. Season with salt to taste. Serve over basmati rice.

Paneer is available at Appel Farm, at the Community Food Co-op, and at the Bellingham Farmers Market.