Paneer – India’s Cottage Cheese

Paneer is a fresh cheese made and used in the cuisine of India. Similar to ricotta or cottage cheese, it is made by heating milk and introducing acid. These conditions cause the milk solids to separate into curds, which are then removed from the whey and pressed into a firm, crumbly, non-melting fresh cheese.

Paneer is used in a number of ways in Indian cuisine. It may be cut into cubes and used in curries, or sliced and eaten out of hand, or crumbled and mixed with vegetables and sauces, or battered and deep fried.

And apparently, it is used in sandwiches. Or so the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches would tell us. Our sole hint for the entry “Grilled cottage cheese sandwich”–confusingly alphabetized between cudighi and cutlet on the list, currently–is this description: “Cottage cheese i.e paneer, green chutney, with some butter and extra cheese.” I extrapolate, based on the name of the sandwich, that this is to be heated on a griddle or in a sandwich press.

On an exploratory trip to Chicago’s Devon Avenue corridor, home to many Desi businesses, I found Paneer paratha, a flatbread stuffed with crumbled cheese, at Annapurna, among other places. This was a far better showing from Annapurna than the vada pav I’d ordered there previously–hot, crisp, served with a sweet yogurt sauce, a medium-hot chana masala, and a small dish of diced onions, chilis, and cilantro on the side.

At the always-solid Uru-Swati I found a paneer roll, crumbled paneer in a mild curry similar to tikka masala, served with shredded lettuce in a rolled-up roti. Open on the ends and served with a small dish of raita, photogenic it was not. It was satisfying though.

I did not find any paneer sandwiches on Devon. It was not until I explored the menus of the pocket of Indian restaurants in Naperville that I found a commercial version, in fact. (Though it is quite likely that one exists on Devon and I simply missed it. Please do suggest any you know of in the comments, thanks!)

Mumbai Cafe, a nice little counter-serve place with enjoyable decor, its chairs now inverted on its tables, the cots that I’d noted on the previous visit now pushed into the corner or removed, was nonetheless doing a reasonable amount of takeout business when I stopped by recently. Their “Paneer Toofani” sandwich, seen here in its “to go” state, is a double-decker toasted sandwich containing a thick slice of paneer, green pepper, red onion, tomato, spicy chutney, covered with wisps of shredded Amul cheese and a pungently aromatic shake of an asafoetida-heavy masala powder. It’s a very well-put-together sandwich, with the bite of the red onion and the spice of the chutney, the crunch of the green pepper, the umami of the tomato and Amul cheese.

Google Translate tells me “toofani” means “stormy” in Hindi, and it’s a good name for the sandwich, both for the spicy flavors and for the nimbus of finely shredded cheese that surrounds it when served.

It’s still not exactly what I was after though. A Google search for grilled paneer sandwich turns up page after page of Indian bloggers, home cooks, chefs, and anyone in between giving their suggestions and recipes for how to make the perfect grilled paneer sandwich.

No two of them are alike, of course.

The simpler among them start with crumbled or shredded paneer cheese, mixed with some cilantro, maybe some mint, maybe some onions or chilies. Here I used shallots and some of the last long green chilies from my garden. I also squeezed in a bit of lime juice and added just enough yogurt to make it into a spreadable (though lumpy) paste. I put this onto a slice of the Pullman-style loaf of sandwich bread I buy at my local Indian market, along with some of my homemade coconut chutney (from our recent post on chutney sandwiches) and some green chili chutney.

Other recipes approximate a simplified, paneer-based version of the dish Egg Bhurji, or spiced scrambled eggs. In this really pared-down version here, I tempered cumin seeds and garlic in some oil before mixing in turmeric, garam masala, and kashmiri chili powder, then adding just enough tomato chutney to get that spreadable consistency I was looking for. It was much like this recipe here, minus the lime and cilantro, plus tomato chutney. I combined this paneer bhurji in a sandwich with some of the stellar ginger chutney from a few weeks ago.

In both cases, I heated these sandwiches through, browning the bread nicely, in a panini press.

The paneer bhurji sandwich was decent but if I were to try it again I’d use a different, more complicated recipe and season it more thoroughly. As it was, the ginger chutney had more than enough flavor to make up for the bhurji’s lack though. The sandwich turned out well regardless.

Paneer is a milky and mild cheese with a firm texture that works well in many of the same situations you’d use a firm tofu or, in this case, a scrambled egg, so the concept of this sandwich is sound. I just need to amp up the flavors around the paneer in the future if they’re going to compete with that ginger chutney.

In any case, the sandwich was perfectly toasted, a crisp enclosure for the zesty flavors contained within. And though the ginger chutney dominated, there’s a nice presence of toasted cumin from the bhurji. The sandwich works out nicely, and is a good way to use some more of the ginger chutney.

This sandwich, though, was a star. The brightness of lime, yogurt, cilantro, and mint was just the right combination to elevate the paneer and counter the slight coconut sweetness and onion pungency of the coconut chutney. Then that slight capsaicin burn from the green chili chutney gives this sandwich the perfect closing note.

I liked it so much that I’ll give you a recipe.

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Jim’s Paneer Sandwich

• 1 cup crumbled paneer (you can just shred it on a box shredder, that works)
• 1/2 small shallot, finely minced
• 1 long green chili, finely minced
• 1-2 tbsp mint, chiffonaded and then chopped up a bit
• 1-2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1-2 tbsp plain yogurt, just enough to make the mixture spreadable
• coconut chutney (recipe here)
• green chili chutney (I used Swad brand)
• sandwich bread
• butter

1. Mix together the paneer, shallot, green chili, mint, and cilantro, then season with the salt and lime juice.
2. Mix in the yogurt until the mixture achieves a spreadable consistency
3. Spread the paneer mixture on one slice of sandwich bread
4. Spread the coconut chutney and green chili chutney on the other slice of sandwich bread.
5. Put them together to make a sandwich. Spread butter on the outsides of the bread and toast in a pan or a panini press until heated through and nicely browned on the outside.

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I had made a perfect sandwich. I could have quit there. Of course I didn’t. I had seen a recipe for paneer tikka masala that didn’t make any sense to me but I felt I had to put in a sandwich. I think the main problem was that it called for hung curds–curds that had been partially drained but not fully turned into paneer–to be the wet component of the recipe. Without that, I ended up with a pan full of dry onions, chilis, and paneer cubes (and some diced tomatoes that the recipe totally didn’t call for but I added anyway) covered in spices. I added some tomato paste and water and cooked it down a bit and eventually ended up with something like a tikka masala.

After I’d made the sandwich, I added some yogurt and that was the magic that needed to happen–it brightened both the flavor and color of the dish and made it much more recognizable as tikka masala. I think that would have been too saucy for the sandwich though. In this dryer form, the mixture was thick enough to make a sandwich filling that would not slop out the sides, or at least not too much.

Along with the brightness of the mint chutney and the crunch of the toasted bread, the tomato-rich tikka masala, redolent with warming spices, makes a compelling hot sandwich.

That could have been it, really. This would have been a respectable post and I’d have tasted a lot of different kinds of paneer sandwiches. I saw this recipe though, and I had to try it. You should try it too.

The paneer mixture here consists of crumbled paneer, shredded carrot, minced green pepper, frozen corn that I heated quickly in the microwave, cumin, kashmiri chili powder, salt, tomato chutney (the recipe called for tomato sauce–I used my chutney instead), and cilantro. The recipe specified to use coriander chutney–I used the mint chutney I like, and added some of the sweet and sour tamarind chutney as well.

There is no one element that dominates in this sandwich. There is both sweetness and a bit of crunch from the carrots and green pepper, plus the occasional sweet pop of a piece of corn, picked up and amplified by the sweet-and-sour tamarind chutney. There is a slight heat from the kashmiri chili and an earthy flavor from the cumin, set off by the brightness of the cilantro and the mint chutney. Once again, the perfectly square, slightly dense Indian sandwich bread toasts up perfectly in the panini press.

It may not be my absolute favorite of these sandwiches–I really did like that first one with the cilantro and mint and coconut chutney. But I do recommend trying it anyway. It is beautiful and delicious and it’ll almost certainly be unlike anything else you’ve eaten lately. This is the sandwich as art.