TIL KAJU BATA PANEER

It seems I have not shared a recipe with Paneer / Indian Cottage Cheese for quite sometime now. I keep cooking it however. What I do is that I keep a block or two of frozen paneer in the freezer and also prepare it at home on some days. The above platter was prepared on X-Mas Eve and my stock of paneer in the freezer is done with. Now, I am thinking of preparing and freezing paneer making it at home. Before that, I have to use up two packets of tomatoes I got home yesterday to prepare a tomato sauce. The store bought tomato sauce and sriracha are about to finish and I wish to prepare another batch of sauce a very simple way without consulting a single recipe about it. The preservative I use for my sauces is vinegar and only it. I so enjoy preparing sauces and pickles at home. The Indian style pickle I had prepared with green apple is tasting so good, I never thought that our kind of spices will go so good with green apple. I am very eager to share the recipe of it, the achar is taking sun bath at this time which is very necessary for Indian pickles. The idea of this blog is to give you a desi feel through it's shares most of the time, shares which will be easy to cook and great to eat. Keeping in tune with that, I had in the making a vegetarian side dish prepared with paneer, roasted white sesame & cashew nut, a bit of yogurt, onion, salt two-three days back. I named it TIL KAJU BATA PANEER.

The Sun is finally seen after 8:30am this morning, you never know all of a sudden it may go down and it will start raining. All my indoor plants are limping and panting. They are installed near the bedroom window pane for some sunlight. This is the problem of not knowing anything about gardening but wanting to have greens in your home. Ever since I have learnt that fallen hairs can be put in the soil which may provide nitrogen to the plants, I am tearing off my hairs literally in addition to the excess of hair fall each day. I never did think my hairs and eye brows may require any care or to be made up, they were naturally good. Now, it seems a basic care of skin and hair is required if not dabbing it with horrendous make ups so much. They say the clime in this island is congenial to causing severe damage to one's skin and hair; then there is the chemically treated water which perhaps have robbed me of half the amount of hair I owned some nine years back. I can forget all these losses and be at my calmest best when I am inside my kitchen holding a ladle. There I experiment with different ingredients, not so exotic ones though. In the process, I discovered this vegetarian paneer dish TIL KAJU BATA PANEER last month perhaps. It's simplicity and taste appealed to me and us so much so that I did it again sooner. Me and the son love paneer, Cristine says she enjoys paneer more than tofu. The husband eats it without a noise. He does not love paneer but particularly this one he had with the ghee rice skipping his love egg. So why not share the recipe? I have a near similar recipe already in my blog CURRY AND SPICE under the name SHAHI PANEER.

INGREDIENTS :

PANEER / INDIAN COTTAGE CHEESE : 250-300GM [should serve a family of 3-4-6]

WHITE SESAME SEED : 11/2TBSP

CASHEW NUT : 5-6

ONION PASTE : 2TBSP

PLAIN YOGURT : 2TBSP

GREEN CHILLI PASTE : 2TSP

TURMERIC POWDER : 2PINCH

BAY LEAF : 1

CINNAMON STICK : 2-3 OF TWO INCH LENGTH

GREEN CARDAMOM : 2-3

CLOVE : 3-4

SUGAR : 1/2TSP

SALT : AS REQUIRED

OIL : 4TBSP

PROCEDURE :

If you are using frozen paneer block or pieces, the first thing you should do is wash and soak the block or pieces in hot, salted water for 2 hours.

Thereafter, discard the water and wash the paneer block or pieces again. If you are using a block, cut them in to desired shapes. Add little salt to them and marinate.

Then what I did was that I dry roasted the white sesame seeds and cashew nuts together and added to the mixer-grinder. I had also added cut onion from 1 big onion peeled and washed, cubed, 2-3 washed green chillies, the plain yogurt. 

They were ground to a smooth paste adding a little of water. 

We would then heat oil in a wok and temper with the bay leaf, cloves, cinnamon sticks and green cardamoms. We will add the white paste, 2 pinches of turmeric powder and salt as required. 

We would then stir the paste for a minute and little more. It seemed amazing that the onion did not smell raw after the brief stir.

Now, we would add 1 coffee mug of lukewarm water and simmer at low heat for 3-4 minutes. We will then add the marinated paneer and 1/2tsp of sugar.

We would cook at the lowest heat for 3-4 minutes and take down.

We enjoyed TIL KAJU BADAM BATA PANEER with Ghee Rice, Dim Aloor Dalna, Soyabean er Tarkari. It would go well with any kind of bread!