I confess
that I do not cover anywhere enough meat free food on this blog. Him Indoors is
a passionate meat eater, and is only up for veggie food which packs a big
flavour punch. And I love meat and fish too much to insist on Meat Free Mondays
or anything similar. So other than a handful of vegetarian recipes, most of my
dishes are meaty ones.
Indian
vegetarian food is, however, marvellous. Somehow the spices, variety of
vegetables used and the cooking techniques make dishes which are full of
flavour and satisfying to even hardened ‘meat heads’ like us. We have both
remarked if we ever had to give up meat, we would have to survive on Indian
vegetarian food. The various dry and wet curries, the lentils, bhajis.....
drool!
Anjali Hall
is yet another of my young, super talented former students. So I am delighted
that she offered to write me a guest post with an original recipe for a
vegetarian Paneer Curry.
Anjali is a
former BPTC student from 2010-12. Everything you need to know about her inner
strength, perseverance and staying power is evidenced by the fact that she did
the course Part Time whilst looking after her daughter and holding down a job. I’m
exhausted just writing about that achievement!
She’s an
amazing, intelligent, lively person, who was always a friendly face in my
drafting lectures and employment law seminars. If you are a twitter person, you will find her at @anjalisagenda
Anjali is also a committed
vegetarian who somehow puts up with my meaty obsessions at Snig’s Kitchen.
Thanks to her influence, I will put more effort into covering meat free dishes.
Paneer is a fresh Indian cheese made without any aging process. It literally is all the curds compacted, with the fluid drained off until it forms a solid block. My mum used to make her own. Thankfully you will be able to get it in many supermarkets (particularly if you live in an area where there is an Indian community) or you can get it from Indian run grocers.
Paneer is a fresh Indian cheese made without any aging process. It literally is all the curds compacted, with the fluid drained off until it forms a solid block. My mum used to make her own. Thankfully you will be able to get it in many supermarkets (particularly if you live in an area where there is an Indian community) or you can get it from Indian run grocers.
So I’m so
pleased she has shared her culinary talents with me and my readers. I’ll hand
over to her, without further ado!
Anjali’s
Sunday Paneer
Not a healthy
dish by any stretch but it tasted very good! My mother in law actually asked me
for the recipe, so I’ve taken the time to write it down for her, and at the
request of Snigdha, who admits that her superb food blog is lacking on the
veggie recipes front! Dedications over.
We had this
on a Sunday when I was scraping the bottom of the fridge and freezer for
ingredients. I rarely follow recipes because I never have the right stuff in
and I’m terrible at organising shopping but do love reading recipes and
stealing the best bits from all of my faves.
Anjali’s
Sunday Paneer Curry
Ingredients:
Paneer
Onions
Ginger
Garlic
Sweet pepper
(thought this might bring a nice touch of colour to the dish)
Peas
Milk
One tub of
honey flavoured greek yogurt
Spices:
Haldi
(turmeric)
Jeera (cumin)
Garam Masala
I cut the
block of paneer into cubes and shallow-fried them until they had a nice brown
colour. Afterwards I plunged the cubes into a bowl of warm water. I don’t know
why I did this, but I saw someone do it once and you see all the oil floating
to the top so it somewhat eases my health conscience. Oh and it keeps the
paneer moist.
Then I sliced
an onion and red sweet pepper into thin slithers and fried them in a little bit
of oil. I was going for the hot-dog sweet caramelised effect so this took about
5 mins. To this I added garlic and ginger (I cheated and used the frozen cubed
ones as it was all I had) and fried these for a bit.
In a bowl I
added half a teaspoon of haldi, two teaspoons of jeera and two teaspoons of
garam masala to a bowl, added a bit of water to make a paste and then poured
the mixture into the pan with the onions & co.
I will at
this point admit that my choice of spices was *entirely* based on trying to
manipulate the colour of the finished dish.
I was also going to make a spicy tomato dish so I didn’t want this curry
to have any red in it. Silly, I know.
So, I let
that bubble away for a few minutes then added a cup of frozen peas, half a cup
of water and a cup of milk.
At this point
I panicked- the ‘curry’ was very watery and I didn’t have any cream in or plain
yogurt to thicken it. Decided to add a tub of Yeo Valley Greek honey flavoured
yogurt and hide the evidence so no one would know what had gone into their
lunch. I added it spoon by spoon
initially as I didn’t want it to turn the dish sweet, but then got bored and
added in the whole thing. The sauce thickened up nicely and I took it off the
heat once the peas were cooked. I added the paneer, gave it a taste and
actually the honey flavour worked really well with the spices.
Delicious!
….and now my
in laws know the truth about what really went into our Sunday lunch!
