Frozen Paneer?

My paneer craving started to creep in right around last Wednesday.  I had been sitting at a restaurant wondering why there were no masala or Indian cheese options on the menu.  It wasn’t just my tastebuds, either…my stomach was crying for the “digestability” that paneer offers, so it could stop grinding away at meat.

But where to find some of this magic white stuff?

The locations of Indian stores are still unknown to me (and from what I’ve heard, too far away), so the next best thing was the Real Canadian Superstore.  These places are pretty big and in Real Canadian fashion, offer East Indian, Oriental, Mexican, and all other types of food.

In the East Indian section, you could find your typical selection of spices, but not too many masalas.  There was dosa powder, sambar mix, and a bunch of jars of “Korma,” “Butter Chicken,” and “Malai,” sauce (probably nothing like the real thing and full of chemicals).  One item that had been previously hard to find was Green Cardamom.  Apparently this stuff only exists in East Indian section across Canada.

So I moved on from that section, still looking for paneer.  Where I stopped was the “International” section of the frozen foods department.  What I found was a package of frozen pieces of paneer.  Something about this made me cringe and wonder who in their right mind would freeze paneer in little pieces and then try to pass it as the real thing.

Maybe my standards for the stuff are a bit unrealistic at this point.