Earlier this week, I tried my hand at making paneer. It worked out pretty well, and taught me to be less diffident about taking on tasks that I'd watched my mother do, with awe. Today I used up the paneer in a peas, carrots and paneer curry. (I'd have liked to use up the paneer the day after I made it - it needs that time to dry - but I had a pretty hectic week at work.)Ingredients:
two tomatoes
one onion
about a quarter pound of paneer (from one gallon of milk) -
half a pound of peas and chopped carrots
one teaspoon chopped ginger
four cloves of garlic
a handful of cilantro
two teaspoons of garam masala
one teaspoon salt
- The kids and I started our cooking adventure with a chopping exercise. They wanted to try
their hand at chopping. So I armed them with blunt butter knives, cutting sheets and very ripe tomatoes - Toss the tomatoes in a mixer, and blend finely with the garlic and ginger (add about a cup of water to the mix)
- Shop the onions into slivers. Also cube the paneer
- Fry the onion in about a teaspoon of oil, add the garam masala. Once the onion gets to be translucent, add in the paneer and toss
- As the paneer starts to brown, add in the peas and carrots and sprinkle about a teaspoon of salt in
- Give the vegetables time to get about half cooked, then pour in the tomato/garlic/ginger paste
- Let simmer for about 15 minutes, till the liquid reduces and soaks into the paneer a bit
- It's ready to serve. This curry works equally well with rotis and rice
Comments
are you saying you do not deep-fry the paneer? maybe you can try it once in a while (though it will add a few calories):
1) make paneer, allow it to dry, say overnight or so.
2) deep fry paneer cubes, and immerse in a salt solution (just like gulab jamuns in sugar syrup) for a few hours
3) follow all your pea curry steps like you listed them (without the paneer steps of course), and once you have put all ingredients, add the paneer cubes (which have now absorbed the salt solution)
- s.b.
p.s.: i came here after reading your congratulations to abhinav bindra on rediff. mighty impressed with your resume and background - thanks for representing the motherland!