Muttar Paneer

Or rather Peas & Cheese

Or as the British would have it .. Muttah pan-Knee-yur!

This recipe is also from Nigella Lawson. It’s from the same show as the pomegranate raita. I usually avoid paneer altogether. But, I haven’t seen paneer dancing with peas in a long time. So I thought, let’s turn on the gas stove and make us some paneer.

This recipe started with a disaster I can never forget. After I paid the bill for all the other ingredients, I realized that all the groceries around my house were out of stock on paneer. If you know me, you know that if I’ve decided mutter paneer, then nothing else can take it place. So after some googling I found out there were cheese substitues that I could use in it’s place. So I headed back to the store, and hello hello! There was plain, hallomi, feta, labneh and what not. Also, a lot of these packs had some ingredient called Cow’s Rennet. I did some googling from my mobile and found out this :-

Cheese is made by coagulating milk to give curds which are then separated from the liquid, whey, after which they can be processed and matured to produce a wide variety of cheeses. Milk is coagulated by the addition of rennet. The active ingredient of rennet is the enzyme, chymosin (also known as rennin). The usual source of rennet is the stomach of slaughtered newly-born calves. 

http://www.vegsoc.org/info/cheese.html
 

Whoops! That was scary! Stomach of a slaughtered newly born calf? No thank you! Just when I was about to give up, I read the next line –

 Vegetarian cheeses are manufactured using rennet from either fungal or bacterial sources. Advances in genetic engineering processes means they may now also be made using chymosin produced by genetically altered micro-organisms.

God bless genetics! I checked some more packs and found one that said – “Rennet cultured from microbes”. I did a little jig. What I had forgotten in my excitement was that I should have also googled whether the cheese melted under fire, or burnt. I didn’t. My bad! I came back home and tried heating the cheese cubes and watch my dreams melt away with them cubes. 

Day 2. Went looking further. In between calls to Chandrasur and 2kgwala, I managed to locate a shop selling paneer. One kilo of it. Amul Frozen Paneer. I actually heard the “Amul .. The Taste of Indiaaaaaa” in my head when I picked up the pack. 10 minutes later, go – time!

What you will need:-

1/2 cup vegetable oil 
250 gms paneer
1 onion, halved 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped 
1-inch piece ginger, roughly chopped 
3 teaspoons of salt – adjust for your taste
1 teaspoon turmeric 
1 teaspoon garam masala 
500gm packet frozen peas 
1 teaspoon tomato puree 
1 cup vegetable stock (I used 2 cups water for this)

Let’s Do This! 

The first thing you can do is prepare the paneer cubes. I opened my 1 kg pack to find two 500 gm packs inside. Which meant I needed to break one of them to get my 250 gms. 2 knives, a hammer and a screwdriver gave me all they had, but alas! I could barely dent the surface. The instruction was to let it thaw for 30 mins. I couldn’t wait that long. I put in my microwave at Med. low for 6 mins, and voila! The knife ran through it smooth as butter..er..cheese. Careful though. You shouldn’t put back in to the freezer stuff that was frozen before and thawed. Keep such items in the fridge. Once you manage to get a chunk of paneer, cut them into darling 1″ cubes like this.

Heat the oil a large pan  and add the paneer cubes, in 2 batches, and fry until they are golden.  The paneer will give out some water when heated, and given that there is no love lost between Mr. Oil and Mr. Water, you may want to get an apron and some glasses on. Fry them on one side ..

And then flip each of them over to fry the other, so that you have something that looks like a grilled sandwich.

Remove the golden cubes to a double thickness of kitchen towel. It is possible to dry fry the paneer cubes in the pan with no oil, to avoid the oil splashing you. Then continue with the recipe below.

Pour all but about 2 tablespoons of the oil out of the pan. Put the onion, garlic cloves, and ginger into a food processor and blitz to a coarse pulp. Should look like this..

Fry gently for about 5 minutes with a sprinkling of salt. Stir in the garam masala and turmeric and cook for another 2 minutes before adding the still frozen peas. Dissolve the tomato puree in the vegetable stock and pour over the contents of the pan. Stir again and turn the heat down to low, cover with foil or a lid.

Before ..

Cook for 15 minutes, tasting to check that the peas are tender.

After..

You can cook muttar paneer up to this stage, if you like, uncovering and then reheating gently with the diced, oil-crisped paneer, or proceed directly now. In which case, take off the foil and add the paneer cubes to warm them through before serving. 

Do that and you have – 

~ Muttar Paneer ~

 

Aloo Peek-a-boo

It all started with Joka. She got married. She started cooking. And then she made something.

I was looking for a nice dish to cook in cashew nut gravy, and she told me about something she had made. I could see it being cooked in front of my eyes. The highlights were cashew nut gravy …. aloo stuffed with cheese!

Only one word comes to mind ….sinful!

I forgot her recipe so I adapted a recipe off the net called Shahi Aloo Kaju. Of course, that recipe was like apka sadharan ghisa pita recpie. This one has a far more oomph to it. I call it Aloo Peek-a-boo.

(in cashew nut gravy) for the seriously lactose tolerant

What you need

Allo Peek-a-boo, What you need

Small sized Potatoes : 300 gms

Cashew nuts : 4 tblsp

Onions : 2 nos

Ginger : 1 inch

Garlic : 1 clove

Chillies : 2 nos.

Jeera: 2 tsps

Garam Masala : 2 tspns

Turmeric Powder : a pinch

Curd : 1/4 cup

Milk : 1/4 cup

Cheese : 2 slices

Oil, for frying

Salt

Let’s Do This!

(Optimized Process)

Phase 1: Soak the cashew nuts in a glass of water. This will get them soggy and they’ll grind easy. Put that away.

Kaju, in the Before

Phase 2: Clean the potatoes, cut them in half and put them on boil. They should be soft enough to scoop out their insides with a spoon. This will take about 15 minutes on a high flame. So in the meantime, we go to

Phase 3: Chop up the garlic and ginger. We’ll be grinding this, so rough chops will do. Chop the onions nice and fine. Slit the chillies lengthwise, wash and cut the coriander leaves and you’re good to go.

Phase 4: Where it all comes together

Kaju, in the After

Step 1: Take the soggy cashew nuts, garlic and ginger and grind, baby, grind.

Add a little water so you get a nice paste.

Step 2: Check on the potatoes. Assuming their done, make like a psychologist and peel off their layers. Next, we’re going to get the inside scoop on them.

I have a confession to make. When I went to Baskin Robbins, I stole one of

Potatoes in the heat

their tasting spoons. I knew it would come handy one day. Well it did. Turns

out it’s a great tool for what we’re going to do next.

Use a spoon to scoop out some of the potatoes. Save the chunks you take out. Next, take the cheese slice and make a little pieces that you can place inside the scooped out holes. Put these on a tray, cheesy side up and inside the microwave, so that the cheese melts. To stop the cheese from drooling, you can make a cut to flatten the heads of the potatoes, so that they can stand up to the heat.

No Fill, Filled, Sinfully Filled

Step 4: Heat some oil on low flame in a kadai. Throw in the jeera. Fry it a bit. Next, toss in the onions, chillies, garam masala and turmeric powder to keep the jeera company. Once the onions show their true colors (golden brown), put in the cashew nut paste that we’d grinded earlier.

The gravy has a tendency to stick to the bottom, so you’ll have to keep stirring it in.

Step 5: Add the curd. Keep stirring and again watch out for the bottom

The broth thickens

sticking. When the gravy thickens, proceed to

Step 6: Add the milk and half a glass of water, about 2 tsps of salt, the

potatoes and the coriander leaves. Keep stirring while mixture thickens and the potatoes get coated nice and good.

Step 7: Switch off the flame. Sprinkle some coriander leaves and some cashew nuts for garnish and voila!

Aloo Peek-a-boo!

Notes:

Variation : Put in half a cashew inside the scooped potato, before stuffing the cheese in. You could put in a raisin there as well

Tangent : Maybe using less potatoes might make it look like one of those koftas that they serve in restaurants

Tangent: Try using no onions at all

 

Simbel Kadala Curry

Somehow a trip to Kerala or anywhere near Kerala would be incomplete without sampling some steaming Puttu and Kadala curry.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Kadala curry is a dish best served sweet. It is keeps company to a generous helping of Puttu, usually accompanied by some pappadam, sugar or banana or any combination of these.

I don’t have the contraption to make Puttu here, so I thought I’d made my favorite Kadala Curry

Here we go now!

What you need:

Black Chana: 200 gms

Grated Coconut: 50 gms

Kashmir Red Chillies: 7 nos.

Onion: 1 medium sized no.

Corainder seeds: 4 Tsp

Curry leaves: Of one stem

Cinnamon: 2″ stick

Baking Soda: a pinch of

Mustard Seeds: 1 Tsp

Sunflower Oil, Salt, Haldi

Lets Do This:

Soak the Black Chana for 12 hours. Soaking it overnight is a good idea. They’ll go from a light and listless brown to a bright and vibrant brown. Wash the chana, put it in a cooker, drown the little tykes in water. Put em’ in a cooker, heat it up and practice counting to 5.

Now let’s get to the base, the gravy, the substance of the dish. Take a small kadai, put in about 2 Tsps oil and keep it on low flame. Add 5 red chillis (after removing their hats), corinader seeds, onion and dalchini. Fry everything around, till you have some sparkling, golden brown looking coriander seeds. It should take about 3 minutes. Take a whiff of that. Now, add all the grated coconut and continue stir-frying. I used to wonder whether people would even realize that I had fried the coconut. But believe you me, when I took this dish to office, with one taste, they appreciated the fried coconut in an instant. Who would have thunk?

Fry the coconut for two minutes. Now make everything jump from the frying pan to the grinder.

Add as little water as possible and grind, baby, grind. It would be a good idea to grind it to as good a paste as is possible.

5 whistles should be done by now. Remove the weight, let the steam out and open it after a few minutes.
Put 2 Tsp of oil and the mustard seed, the last two chillies, halved breadth wise, the curry leaves and I tsp of haldi powder. Let them get to know each other at a low flame. When things start to pop, put in the paste that we just got grinded and fry it around just for fun. Put in a glass of water. (Hint: You can use this to clean out the grinder).

Fry for 3 more minutes and add the black chana in. Put a lid on it and heat for some 5 minutes, till you get the consistency that you want. I prefer mine a little thick, so I heat it longer.

Takes it off, say “Yemmy Kadala Curry” and eat up. If you don’t have Puttu, you can use bread, chappathi or even rice.

 

Undhiyo Friday

It’s got to start somewhere and what better way that with the Undhiyo?

Gujju cooking has always been a favorite and is especially famous for it’s excessive use of sugar, oil and love. Any dip into a Gujrathi Thali is bound to leave you full-filled 😉 My mom had been making Undhiya (as we called it) on demand. We usually saved it for special occasions. But when she did make it, it was delightful. When I came to Dubai, I heard that the Hari Om served Undhiya every Friday evening. Since my weekends were unsuprisingly free, I was a regular.

When I shifted, I decided to get to work on this dish. The preparation is long and laborious, but you know what they say about Rome! The dish is wholesome. The funny thing is I hate yam, brinjal and beans. And yet, here is a dish with truckloads of them and I find myself licking my fingers.

I used the recipe from Bella Online.

Ingredients:

Gravy

Baby potatoes 5-6 nos. peeled Large carrot 1 no. peeled and chopped into bite size pieces
Baby Indian eggplants 4-5 nos.
Papdi (Indian broad beans or use green/string beans) 1 cup cut into 1” pieces
Yam pieces 1 cup peeled and cut into small cubes
Large raw green banana 1 no. cut into 2 inch pieces
Ginger 1 inch peeled and rough chopped
Garlic 3-4 large cloves rough chopped
Small Thai green chilies 3-4 nos.
Coconut ½ cup freshly grated
Lemon 1 no. juiced

Masala

Mustard seeds 1 tsp
Turmeric (haldi) ½ tsp
Ground coriander powder ½ tsp
Ground cumin powder ½ tsp
Asafetida (hing) pinch
Salt & pepper
Vegetable oil
Cilantro leaves 1 cup freshly chopped
Coconut 2 tbsp freshly grated for garnish

Muthiya

Besan ½ cup
Fresh fenugreek leaves 1 cup chopped
Ginger ½ piece peeled and finely chopped
Small Thai green chilies 3-4 nos. finely minced
Salt to taste
Vegetable oil

Recipe:

In a small grinder, grind together the ginger, garlic, green chilies, coconut and ½ cup cilantro leaves into a coarse thick masala paste adding water as needed. Set aside.

Traditionally, the outer skin of the raw banana or plantain is left on but this is optional. It is softened and edible after cooking but some people find it a bit too fibrous. Wash and prepare the baby potatoes, baby eggplants and raw banana (or plantain) pieces by cutting them only partially through into wedges (make a partial “X“ cut). Remember to leave the stem or end intact, so you can stuff the vegetables with the coarse masala paste.

Stuff the vegetables, sprinkle liberally with lemon juice to prevent any browning or discoloration and set aside until needed.

To make the muthiyas, combine the chopped fenugreek (or baby spinach leaves) with the besan, green chilies, salt, ginger and enough water to make a thick firm dough. Form into an inch thick roll (snake) and cut off 1.5 inch pieces. In a large deep kadai or wok on medium high heat, add enough oil to shallow fry. When hot, add the muthiya and fry until golden brown on all sides. Remove and drain well on absorbent paper, set aside until needed.

In another large deep kadai on medium high heat, add 1-2 tbsp of oil. When hot, carefully add the mustard seeds. Add a pinch of the asafetida and then add the papdi. Stir fry for a few minutes and then add the carrot and yam pieces. Then add the spices (turmeric, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper) and mix well. Continue to stir fry for 3-4 minutes and then carefully add the stuffed baby potatoes, baby eggplants and raw banana (or plantain) by arranging them in a single layer. Reduce the heat to low, sprinkle with a little salt, add ½ cup or so of water, cover and let cook 15-20 minutes. The vegetables should be tender and cooked. Add the fried muthiyas, cover and cook for another 5-6 minutes.

Garnish with fresh cilantro leaves and grated coconut. Serve immediately with warm chapatis and fragrant Basmati rice.