Palak Paneer questions?

Vasko

Hi all,

We've set our minds on making palak paneer at home, and have searched the internet for recipes. A couple of questions to those of you who have experience in preparing it:

Do you prefer fresh garlic and ginger or do you use garlic-ginger paste?

Do you prefer yoghurt, cream, or sour cream?

Do you include tomato or not?

If you wish, please your own recipes! Thanks.

Cardamom

Hi Vasko - sorry I can't help to weigh in on your questions on this specific recipe. However, I was wondering if you're making your paneer from scratch? Or are you using the frozen type bought in the shops?

Just curious! Please do let us know how it turns out!

-C

Vasko

Hi cardamom,

We intend to buy the cheese in a shop, though there is not any specifically paneer available here in Finland... so we will try something else, maybe ricotta cheese or Finnish homemade cottage cheese.

nikhilsegel

Its actually quite simple to make Cottage Cheese (Paneer) At home.

1) Bring Milk to a boil while stirring
2) Add Juice of one Lemon
3) Keep stirring and you find the milk start to separate.
4) Keep stirring till you have no milk left but just clear (light green for some reason) water
5) Pour through a thin muslin cloth
6) Tie the cloth tight and hang.
7) Compress under some heavy stuff to get into a brick shape

More detailed method
http://www.ayurbalance.com/explore_howtospaneer.htm
or
http://funnfud.blogspot.com/2008/04/...cheese-at.html

On the Palak side .. the fresher the ingredients the better

machadinha

You could substitute the paneer by feta cheese if available where you live, preferably as non-salty as possible. Or perhaps tofu (right substance, not exactly right taste of course though, in fact little taste of itself at all), perhaps fry tofu briefly before using. Or some other very young/fresh cheese yes (ricotta I'd advise against though, too soft really, and not the right taste. Some slightly firmer form of cottage cheese might do I suppose yes.) Feta is in fact what I normally use; again though, the pre-packaged variety can be quite salty, try to avoid this if you have the choice.

If you have any Asian shops around (notably Pakistani or Indian of course , or Caribbean of such backgrounds, where I live), these may sell (their own freshly-made) paneer. Or make yourself, as noted; I've never done it but it's said to be easy yes (and looks that way from the above recipe), little involved perhaps, should be fun to do though. Note this should be done the day before or so, you leave it hanging overnight I think to properly drain (place a bowl under it while you do!)

My palak paneer I keep fairly simple I think; fry some herbs and spices of choice, add spinach, add paneer/feta whatever at the final stage, and presto. It's open to variation no doubt.

It's been a while since I made it (or shall we say attempted to ), but I'd probably fry some onions and garlic, along with perhaps ground cardamom, chillies, turmeric, black pepper, little salt (leave out salt if using salty cheese); add spinach; add dash of cumin, whole cinnamon and cloves (perhaps in bit of muslin cloth or somesuch [tea ball] to be able to fish out cloves later), perhaps dash of garam masala or curry powder, chilli powder; add cheese at final stage, leave to warm but cheese shouldn't melt.

Bon appetit I guess some butter or perhaps cream could be added for creamy effect yes, don't think I ever do really, lump of butter, maybe (look for ghee perhaps while you're at it, or make yourself again). Some tomato cubes perhaps, why not. Again, experiment at will!

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nikhilsegel

On keep the bowl under the dripping cottage cheese. Also, the remaining water in the whole process becomes quite a refreshing drink .. slightly lemony ...

livinhimalayas

Vasco here is how I make palak paneer and it turns out good, never heard anyone complaining about it. I keep it fairly simple.
Clean and wash the palak thoroughly then blanch it in some boiling water. Take out and either chop it finely or run it through a blender.
In a frying pan add a table spoon of oil, then add some finely chopped onions, garlic and ginger , if you don;t mind it too much, add some green chillies and fry till soft, add the palak and some water, cook till it starts to boil and then turn the heat down and simmer for ten minutes or till the palak is cooked thoroughly and forms a thick curry, add the chunks of paneer and cook for another two minutes. Sprinkle some garam masala and mix through. Pour into a serving bowl and add a dash of cream and some chopped green coriander for garnish.
If you want, you can add tomatoes to the onion, garlic etc. I normally don't and I am not partial to tomatoes.

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machadinha

Now that you mention, also said to be quite healthy & good on the stomach and intestines. One assumes it has yoghurt/buttermilk-like qualities.

crvlvr

I tried this recipe and it came out terrific.
http://www.vahrehvah.com/recipedetai...cipe_id=32 58

There is a link to a video too.

I have had great success with all of this chef's recipes

Cardamom

Thanks for the tips, nikhilsegel for making it fresh. I may actually attempt this over the weekend! Let us know how it goes, Vasko!


-C

Vasko

Thank you all for the tips and suggestions! My mouth is already watering, palak paneer is one of my favorite Indian dishes. We'll be having a go at it on Thursday, so we'll be reporting on how it turns out after that. Today we'll go shopping for ingredients, we do have a sort of Asian/Middle East shop in our town, but I doubt they have paneer... let's see what we end up using...

PRIYA

The whey is delicious - but if you find you're not too keen on the taste, if you have dogs, they'll lap it up with glee.

You can also use the whey to flavour vegetables or, if stir-frying, it gives a distinctive flavour.

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machadinha

Interesting tip yes, thanks, that sounds good. OK, should have a go at my own paneer some day then

And Vasko, enjoy! There should be little to do wrong about it really.

Vasko

Quite optimistic!

machadinha

Always! Hey, cooking should be fun, not a worry.

I'd been thinking btw you'll normally want to do a bunch of dishes; so what I do is take out all my appropriate spices, then start thinking well a bit in here, a bit in there... They don't need to be all unique of course and so there'll be a lot of overlap, but you obviously don't want them all to taste the same either.

I don't know how our Indian cooks here feel about it, but I'll not be so specific about what goes in where. Well, certain dishes call for certain spices, obviously. Matter of experience, and of trial & error mostly, (and of reading cookbooks and talking to people, certainly), I reckon.

Don't be too shy about what you do.