Haven’t shared a recipe in a while, so I thought I would share one of my favourite and very popular Indian recipes, Palak Paneer. It’s a spinach-based curry with paneer (Indian cottage cheese), high in iron and a good amount of protein and very easy to make. If you are not into vegetarian dishes, you could just substitute it with chicken if you like. Let’s get started…..
Ingredients (This quantity makes 2 portions):
2 bunches of baby spinach
400 g of paneer
2 tomatoes
2 red onions
20 g ginger garlic paste
20 g dried fenugreek leaves
10 g chilli powder
10 g garam masala
10 g coriander powder
5 g turmeric
5 g cumin seeds
50 ml cream
2 cloves of garlic
10 g butter
Oil and salt to taste
Method:
- First step for us is to make the spinach puree. Have a pot of boiling water and blanch the spinach for a minute and cool it down immediately in cold water. Once cold, blend it until smooth and we’ve got some spinach puree. (Cooling it immediately after blanching helps it to retain its nice green colour – if you leave it for too long it would start to go a bit off colour)
- Next we prep the onions by finely chopping them, tomatoes by blending them into a puree and prep the garlic cloves by chopping them finely for tempering later.
- Let’s start off with the curry: heat up a sauce pan and add butter and oil. Once the butter is melted, add in the cumin seeds and let them splutter.
- Now add in the chopped onions and cook them for 2 minutes. Once soft, add in the ginger garlic paste and cook it for a further 3 minutes or until the onions have got a golden colour on them. Now we add in the tomato puree and cook until it starts to leave oil. (You should be able to start seeing a bit of oil being separated at the edge of the pan, indictaing tomatoes are now fully cooked)
- Now time for the spices: add in the fenugreek leaves, chilli powder, turmeric, coriander and the garam masala and mix well until combined and cook it for a further 2 minutes.
- Now add in the spinach puree, mix well and cook it until it starts boiling. Once it starts bubbling, add in the paneer and cook for 2 minutes.
- Next add in the cream and salt, mix well, taste to see if any adjusting of seasonsing is needed and we are almost ready to serve.
- In a separate pan, we are going to make our tempering. Heat up some oil and add in the chopped garlic and pinch of chilli powder and immediately take it off the heat to avoid burning.
- Now in a bowl, serve the palak paneer and top it with the tempering and a spoon of cream.
- Your Palak Paneer is ready to be served! Enjoy it with a naan or rice or whatever you prefer, and share it with friends and family
There you guys have it! A simple recipe to try at home. If you try it, share and tag us to see what you created, I would love to see it. Hope you enjoy it! 🙂