Two weeks ago I found naan. I love naan and wanted to make some kind of Indian dish to go with it, and my favorite is palak paneer; spinach and cheese. I have a few bags of frozen spinach and other ingredients. What I don’t have is paneer. Paneer is a pretty basic cheese and I’ve made it before. It’s just fresh pressed curds and you can make it from scratch in about half an hour. It takes a lot of milk, and I only had, at the time, almond milk and a frozen pint of skim. But a few weeks ago, I found some ricotta salata.

Ricotta salata is ricotta that has been salted to sweat out moisture while being pressed, and results in a harder cheese with a texture similar to paneer. Most importantly, like paneer, it does not melt, so it can be seared. I only had a little bit of it left. But I did have two containers of regular ricotta, so rather than go out and buy some paneer like a reasonable person, I decided to make ricotta salata.

“Basket ricotta” comes in a small plastic basket that leaves an impression on the cheese when overturned. It is already a bit firmer than regular ricotta. I wanted to use the basket as a container to press the cheese in, but the weights wouldn’t fit inside.

I mixed some salt into the ricotta and wrapped it in cloth and set that over a small glass inside a larger container, underneath 5 lbs of weights. I bought the weights years ago with the intention of lifting weights but instead I used them to press cheese and books and keep the Roomba* from getting stuck under my dresser. Whey was dripping from the cheese within minutes, but the full process of pressing was going to take at least a week, so I froze my naan.

After sitting overnight the cheese had firmed up a bit but was still very soft. About a tablespoon of liquid had leached out of the cheese. I flipped the cheese over and salted the top every day. After a few days the cheese seemed like it was no longer getting firmer, so I increased the weight to 10 lbs.

There was still little progress and no liquid on the plate, and suspecting that the cloth was holding moisture into the cheese rather than allowing it to leach out, I unwrapped the cheese and wrapped the whole plate in plastic wrap. This helped a lot and for the next few days I continued flipping and salting the cheese.

Today is my birthday so I decided today the cheese would be ready whether it was firm enough or not. It was not as hard or as white as the commercially produced ricotta salata, pictured above on the left, but it was still firm enough to cut and firm enough not to fall apart. I rinsed the cheese to remove excess salt before cooking.

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I started by sauteing an onion and then added fresh garlic** and ginger and a blend of spices: turmeric, coriander, cumin, red pepper flakes, cinnamon, curry powder, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves and salt. The spices I used were entirely store-bought. I know I’ve had the jar of cardamom for at least nine years, because I packed my spices with my clothes when I shipped them to myself when I left home for college, and the jar became unscrewed in the box and made my sweaters smell very nice.

Once the spices cooked a bit I added two bags of thawed frozen spinach, two diced tomatoes, and a can of coconut milk. I had the good fortune last month of finding four cans.

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This was cooked for twenty minutes, then left to cool a few minutes and blended it with a stick blender.

Meanwhile, I browned the cheese in a little olive oil, then mixed in the blended spinach.

While it was cooking, I took my naan out of the freezer and thawed it in the oven.

So, yes, I spent a week cooking myself spinach for my birthday, and it was worth it.

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*Ecovacs Deebot, $120

**Store-bought