Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Palak Paneer #2 ~ Tried and tasted!

Cooking would have been a boring task if not for the blogging world. I love cooking but do get bored If  I were to make similar dishes every other day. I love change when it comes to food and love to experiment with different recipes for a particular veggie or a particular dish. Thankfully, my family too loves to experiment with food. The little fellow is slowly picking up and I hope he too will learn to love and appreciate food as we both do.
Palak Paneer is an absolute favorite of mine. I have already blogged about it here. Even though I love that recipe, I kept looking for different ways to make it.When I saw the Palak Paneer recipe at Sia's Monsoon spice I was hooked! I knew I had to make it. I have always loved reading her blog and drooling at the amazing shots. Her posts take me back to my native Mangalore and churn up a lot of hidden memories.  Thanks Sia. Even before I could finish the dish I was sure it was going to be a hit. The aroma and the flavours were simply amazing! I have followed her recipe with minor changes. I am blogging it here for my future reference.

Here is what's needed:
3 cups baby spinach
1/2 cup Paneer cubed (I prefer to cut them into small cubes and avoid frying it. You may shallow fry or deep fry)
2 green chillies minced
1 Onion chopped fine
1 Tomato chopped fine
3 garlic cloved minced
1" ginger minced
2 tbsp fresh cream (As suggested by Sia may be substituted with 1/4 cup whole milk)
1/2 tsp Sugar
1 tbsp lime juice
salt to taste
1 tbsp oil

1" cinnamon
2 cloves
2 green cardamoms
1/4 tsp Jeera
1/2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp garam masala powder
1/2 tsp Kitchen king masala
1 tsp Kasuri methi
a pinch of hing

Procedure:
1) Blanch the cleaned spinach in hot water for a minute and run it through cold water or immerse it in a bowl of ice cold water to prevent further cooking. Puree in a blender to coarse paste.
2) Heat oil. Add cumin seeds and when they crackle add the whole spices. Fry and then add hing. Add the chopped onions. Fry until golden followed by ginger, garlic and green chilies. Fry.
3) Add the spice powders and fry for a min. As suggested by Sia, I sprinkled a little water to prevent the spice powders from burning.
4) Add in the tomato and fry until soft and mushy. Add the spinach puree, salt and sugar. Add the cream and little water to adjust the consistency of the gravy. Cook until well incorporated.
5) Add Paneer and give it a soft boil. Switch off. Drizzle the lime juice and serve hot.

I served it with kerala parotta. It can be served with soft warm phulka's, roti , Nan's and stuffed paratha's too.