Home made cheese is the best!

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  Step 1

  Get everything you're gonna need together.

  In terms of ingredients, you mostly just need milk and rennet (has to be vegetarian for me). The dried mint and salt will be useful later on. The box I got had everything I needed except the milk - read more in the intro about how I got the milk. It should be unhomogenised milk - it's sometimes known as gold top.

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  Step 2

  Put all of the milk in the pan. I found out a little too late that my saucepan isn't big enough, and ended up making a half batch (check back later to see what I did with the rest!). So this is three and a half pints of milk.

  I cooked it up, stirring, until it hit 32 degrees celsius, which actually isn't very hot.

  At the same time I dissolved a quarter tablet of rennet into some cooled boiled water.

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  Step 3

  Have a bowl of water at 32 degrees waiting - I just used the whole sink to make things easier. You can see the ingenious method of putting the thermometer in a cutlery holder so I could keep an eye on the temperature.

  Pour the rennety water into the saucepan of milk, gently mixing in an up and down motion for a few seconds, trying not to disturb the milk too much. Cover and leave for 45 minutes, topping up with warm water occasionally to keep it at a balmy 32 degrees.

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  Step 4

  After 45 minutes the milk had set into some gross yoghurty-looking thing. I cut in strips across, and then tilted the knife and went perpendicularly so it ended up in kind of cubes. Let them rest for ten minutes.

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  Step 5

  Put the pan back on the hob and fold those curds back in. They'll go all gross and squishy now. It takes about fifteen minutes - then leave for ten minutes to rest.

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  Step 6

  Pour the whole mixture through a muslin cloth on top of a sieve that's resting in a bowl. You'll be left with this hideous mixture.

  Fold the muslin cloth around the curds and press.

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  Step 7

  You can see here that I used my saucepan and filled it with cans to get a good weight - the curds are pressing underneath. The whey is next to it, as we'll need it later on.

  I left this for about an hour.

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  Step 8

  Open up the muslin and chop the curds into sections - the recipe says eight but as I made half of it, I only have four.

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  Step 9

  Heat up the whey again on the hob, bringing it up to 93 degrees celsius. Skim off any foam on top.

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  Step 10

  Gently lower the pieces of curd back into the whey, and cook for 20 minutes, then get the cheese out and put in cold water for just 20 seconds to get any extra curds off.

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  Step 11

  Take them out of the pan with a slotten spoon and straight onto a cooling rack.

  Sprinkle heavily with salt on both sides. Add mint if you want to (we put it on half).

  Finito! Doesn't that look good?!

  Turned out we were a little too generous with the salt, but it was still delicious!

  We ended up using it in a delicious salad with vegetables from our garden, and then later in the week fried in a Cypriot breakfast =)

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  Step 12

  So as I mentioned earlier, I didn't have a big enough saucepan to hold all of the milk. Easy enough mistake to make. However my second problem was all my bad - I poured in the entire rennet solution instead of just the half. I didn't want to make up another lot of the rennet water just to use half of it, so I decided to try something else.

  Full recipe for making super easy paneer at home coming soon!

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  Step 13

  Another note - don't get rid of the whey! It can be used for virtually anything. Put it in a bath for your skin, use it as water or milk in any recipe - I used it instead of water in a loaf of bread, to thicken a white sauce for lasagne (it was delicious), as a red pasta sauce thickener and to cook couscous and rice. SO useful.

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