mixed greens with fried prosciutto and paneer in a cara cara vinaigrette

Tonight, I threw together a salad from things lying about the fridge. It gave me a chance to practice the technique of segmenting oranges, and to write about paneer, a fresh cheese so easy to make yourself you'll wonder why no one told you sooner.

I always encourage substitution and experimentation, but this salad was SO BLOODY GOOD that if you wanted to duplicate it exactly, I've provided the exact ingredients below.

That being said, for substitutions, the most obvious might be parmesan crisps instead of prosciutto (for the veggieheads), any vinegar instead of white balsamic, and any orange instead of cara cara.

You'll need:

paneer, aka fresh cheese (see below)

a cara cara orange, segmented

a whack of mixed greens

white balsamic vinegar

red grapes, halved

prosciutto

olive oil

pepper

salt

Segment an orange by cutting its top and bottom off (about a centimetre) so it sits flat on a cutting board. Using a filleting or other long thin knife, carefully cut away the rind in gentle arcs from top to bottom. You should have a naked orange now, preferably with no pith left on the flesh. Slice alongside the natural segment dividers in the orange, creating skinless, pithless wedges of orange.

You'll be left with an orange "skeleton", which you can squeeze into a small mixing bowl; this juice will be the base of your dressing and you should have at least a tablespoon or two of it.

Fry some prosciutto in a bit of oil until crispy, then break into chips. In the same hot pan, use the juice you just squeezed to deglaze any bits of prosciutto, and reduce the volume of juice by half. Add your vinegar, a pinch of salt, and fresh ground pepper, reduce a bit further, then take off the heat and whisk in a glug of olive oil.

Assemble the salad starting with your greens, then layering on your orange segments, grapes, cheese, and prosciutto chips. Pour the dressing, still warm from the pan, all over your salad. By far one of the tastiest salads I've ever had.

PANEER:

A fresh, acid-set, unripened cheese made from three simple ingredients you almost certainly have in the kitchen. Tasty, healthy, ready in minutes.

You'll need:

1 litre of milk (whole is ideal, but I used 2% and it worked out just fine)

a glug of regular white vinegar

salt

a fine-mesh sieve or cheesecloth (though you could even use your hands!)

Bring milk to the boil. Once roiling, add a glug of vinegar, and watch. If your milk doesn't separate into curds and whey within seconds, keep adding small splashes of vinegar until it happens. Once the whey is as transparent as its going to get (meaning that your milk solids have fully separated into curds), strain the lot of it through a sieve or cheese cloth, or if you have neither on hand, let the mixture cool and simply drag the cheese out with your hands and wring it dry. Rather inelegant, but if the curds have clumped well, it'll work fine. Discard your whey, unless you own pigs, in which case you should mix it into their water for a high protein all-natural supplement.

Season with salt (and pepper and other spices if you want), and store in an airtight container in the fridge. The paneer should keep for up to a week, but I wouldn't venture much longer.

It's best fresh, and lovely on salads, with fruit, layered into lasagna, eaten with curries, or used in place of ricotta (omit the salt if you're throwing it into desserts).