Palak Paneer

That looks awesome Kiwi...do you make your own paneer? I hear it's easy to do...even more so that mozarella, but never tried it myself.

I had posted a couple of pics of this delicious curry in the what are you cooking thread, but I've been meaning to repeat it and provide some more detail, as I had a recipe request from Coxie. So, here it is:

Palak paneer is a type of saag curry, made with spinach and cottage cheese (instead of mustard leaves). This is a slightly kiwi-ised version of it (I include tomatos), but still very tasty.



So ingredients:
frozen spinach, free flow of leaves or portions, doesn't matter. I used about 220g.
2 roughly chopped onions
paneer - you can see the wedge I used in the picture, I also augmented this with a handful of frozen paneer as some other people turned up hungry.
tomatos - 1 can would be fine, I used two and probably shouldn't have.
your oil of choice - I used both seasame and chili infused rice bran oil. Ghee would be traditional.
All the usual curry spices, including plenty of fresh corriander
cream to thicken (not in pic, I probably used 150 ml, which is for a very creamy outcome)
Basmati rice and pappadums to serve.
Loads of people to impress. This fed 5, with everyone but me going back for seconds.

Right, so the first thing we have to do is fry our paneer to get it nice and tasty, and modify the texture. You can choose what spices (if any) you fry paneer in, I've chosen to use mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and just a pinch of masala for colour (1/4tsp). I'm also using my chili oil for flavour.



I've added the spices to hot oil. Once they start popping and jumping around, I'll reduce the heat and add the chopped paneer.



It's pretty robust stuff, especially once it starts to get browned, so don't be afraid to throw it around the pan. I can never be bother turning each bit, so I just flip the pan like it's a stirfry once in a while.

About halfway done:


When they're good and toasted, set them aside, and get to work on the gravy part of the curry. This is all pretty standard, fry your spices in oil:


A bit messy, I had to cook this quickly, but going clockwise from left we have tumeric, Pav bahji masala, kashmiri chili, corriander, cumin, fenegreek, ginger, garlic, and amchur. I've used seasame oil this time. Make a paste, get to frying it.

My paste is a little dry, I'm going to thin it out with some white vinegar:


and after that has been frying a while and everyone in the house can smell the delicious, add your onion and continue to fry on a medium heat. add more oil if it's getting problematically dry, but the onions should start sweating soon and that will help. You should really do this until the onions are clear, but I was rushing, so only got about this far:


Meanwhile, I defrosted my spinach, and then hand squeezed it over the sink to get rid of some of the water, because I like my curries quite thick. A can of tomatoes is added now.


Once we're simmering again, I add the drained spinach and keep cooking


after a couple of minutes for the benefit of the spinach, take off the heat and blend until smooth, or until the point of 'good enough' if you're rushing


I love my blender. Anyway.... return the smooth(ish) gravy to the pan, and get simmering again. Now is a good time to make sure your rice is cooking away for serving. I almost always boil my rice, so once it goes into the water, I've got about 15-17 minutes left in the meal.

mmm, baby poo green.

This now needs plenty of cooking, to get rid of the sweetness of the tomatos. Without really thinking, I added a second can of tomatos at this point:


which was, well, a mistake. It would have been good if I had another 30 minutes or so to cook it down and get the flavours nicely melded, but I only had about 10 minutes left of a guest would have to leave hungry! So, hindsight, probably a bad addition, it left the curry too sweet and the tomato was too prominent.

While simmering this, you'll need to stir often, as it can get quite thick and you don't want the bottom to burn!

With about 5 mins remaining, add a small handful of fresh corriander. This is Essential with a capital E. Here is how much I used for reference:



With a couple of minutes remaining, I added cream for... creaminess:



(Photo not representitive of colour, but rushing and only have one hand!)
At this point if you aren't interested in being traditional, my curry secret weapon, parmesan cheese, is a good addition... Well, it isn't my secret weapon really, I stole it from my indian flatmate Nisarg.

Get a slave (whoever is hanging around the kitchen getting in the way) cooking pappadums in the microwave or frying them if you have a bigger stove than I:



In the last few minutes of cooking, add the paneer - you could fry the paneer at the same time as cooking the gravy and just serve on top, but I don't have space for that, so it gets reheated in the gravy. Same taste, just doesn't look as good on the plate.



And you're about done.


An ugly, and oh-so tasty kiwi adaption of a punjabi classic. I don't cook much punjabi food, but they really export to western tastes much better than my usual bastardised maharathi or Bhojpuri style Indian cooking. Most of the food you'll find in a western curry house would have been derived from punjabi food.

Here is a picture of a happy Indian:


And here is a picture of a skeptical, but soon to be happy German (the 8 foot tall monster went back for thirds ):


And here is a picture of the final touch, which I realised was missing after a few mouthfuls:


Mmmm, nothing beats a curry and a good beer.
Cheers.
Kiwi

Cool! Essentials would be paneer (but you can make that, milk + lemon juice / citric acid), but you'd have most of the rest of it in your spice shelf / rack / drawer I'd imagine... maybe some of the less standard ones like fenegreek, and a nice masala (garam masala would be fine). You can use lemon juice instead of amchur, it's just for acidity really. All the spices are pretty flexible really, as long as you've got chilli, corriander and cumin, you can make the rest up. Shit, you could just use curry powder, I just like playing with all the different colours

They'll probably be fine up to the point you want to customise the meal to your tastes.