I have paneer!!!
Yesterday I went on a paneer hunt. I wanted just the paneer itself, not already part of some premade dish. I found it at the second market I tried.
Bristol Farms allegedly just started selling paneer several days ago! The guy there said no one else local to me was selling it; I'll verify that later. Lucky me! $6.99 for 14oz. -- prolly a helluva lot more than it would cost in India!
I've always loved Palak Paneer -- an Indian dish consisting of spinach with yummy spices, and paneer, which is an Indian cheese.
But during my visit to India, I discovered that for (non-vegan) vegetarians in India, paneer serves the much the same role as tofu does for vegetarians here in the US and many other places. So there are many, many "paneer dishes". And dishes adapted to have paneer in them, and dishes with paneer added, etc. I came home with four little paperback paneer cookbooks, partially inspired by my curiosity, partially by my potential ambition to cook some myself, but probably mostly inspired by my desire to have the little books in my kitchen with their happy titles: "Paneer Dishes", "More Paneer Dishes", and "Still More Paneer Dishes" (or some titles like those; I don't have the books handy at the moment).
Also while in India I discovered (and verified two more times) that paneer is an excellent addition to ramen! Mmmmmm!!! I will next verify that that combo tastes just as good here in the US....
And so I took a low-quality phone-cam-pic to celebrate my happy acquisition. Yay!
hitchhiker nicely verified for me that the Hindi writing on the package does indeed translate to "paneer". Ahhh, glad to hear that! Phew! :)