Tag Archives: Main Course

Paneer in a Minty Yoghurt Sauce

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I’ve been on a roll recently and have been experimenting a lot in the kitchen. Hope this continues on after I’m done being a career woman and started my break. Today’s recipe is a variation on a standard paneer recipe that I tweaked. Everyone in my home, especially BB love paneer and I make some sort of paneer recipe atleast twice a month. The result was this delicious paneer in a minty yoghurt sauce.

Paneer in a Minty Yoghurt Sauce

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups frozen paneer, (cubed if not already done so)
  • 2 medium sized onions
  • 2 medium sized tomatoes
  • 3 flakes garlic
  • 1 inch size ginger
  • 3 fresh green chillies
  • 1/2 cup mint leaves
  • 2 cups yoghurt
  • 2 tbsps kasoori methi (dried fenugreek leaves)
  • 2 tsps oil
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • salt to taste
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
  • 2 tsps sabzi masala (I used Everest)
  • Coriander to garnish

Method:

Put the frozen paneer in a largish dish and pour hot water over it to soften it. This will take around 10 minutes. You can do the other prep work while the paneer softens.

In a grinder/blender zip the following ingredients and make it into as smooth a paste as you can – garlic, ginger, onions, tomatoes, green chillies, mint. You can use some of the yoghurt instead of water if you need.

Heat oil in a pan and when it is hot enough add the cumin seeds. When the seeds splutter,  put in the turmeric powder and then pour in the blended paste and let it cook for a while. When the paste is cooked and starts leaving the sides of the pan, add the paneer and turn a few times to make sure all the paneer pieces are coated with the paste. Now add some more yoghurt to this (as thin as you like it to be) and then lightly crush the kasoori methi in your palms and add it to the mixture. Add salt to taste and the sabzi masala and let the mixture bubble well.

Transfer to a serving bowl, garnish with coriander leaves and eat with rice or rotis.

Verdict: The recipe was a bit different due to the mint added which gave a slight minty taste to the paneer. Good to eat with pulao and rotis, but if I was going to eat it with rotis, I would make it a bit more thicker that I made it today. Definitely something to try again.

Arachavitta Sambhar

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This is a very traditional South Indian recipe. Archavitta literally means with ground spices. This sambhar is different from the usual one we make on a regular basis in that there is no sambhar powder used.

I have wanted to make this for a few weeks now. The last time I tried making it, I found I didn’t have coconut at home and so had to postpone making it. I finally made it with the basic recipe from my bible of tam bram cooking – Cook and See by S. Meenakshi Ammal. I used the recipe from Book 1 of Cook and See and tweaked it a bit using advice given to me by my mother and mother-in-law.

Arachivitta Sambhar

Ingredients:

  • ½ cup red gram dal (toor dal)
  • 1 small lime sized ball of tamarind, soaked in water and the pulp squeezed out
  • 1 cup shallots
  • 1-2 carrots, peeled and cut into big pieces
  • ½ a yellow pumpkin, peeled and cut into big cubes
  • 4-5 potatoes, cut into largish cubes
  • 2-3 tsps oil
  • 1 tsp mustard seeds
  • Salt to taste
  • Coriander leaves to garnish

To be ground into a paste:

  • 6-8 dried red chillies
  • 2 tsps coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp Bengal gram seeds (chana dal)
  • 1 tsp fenugreek seeds
  • 4-5 shallots
  • ½ cup fresh, grated coconut

Method:

In a small pressure cooker, pressure cook the toor dal with a pinch of turmeric powder till it is soft and the dal has broken down. This usually will take around 3 whistles in the cooker.

Heat 1 tsp of oil in a pan and one by one add the ingredients to be gound into a paste and roast them till the coconut is golden and the water in it evaporates. Transfer to a mixer and when cool, grind it to a fine paste using a bit of water. Keep aside.

In the same pan, heat the remaining oil and add the mustard seeds. When they pop, put in the shallot and stir for a few minutes. Then add the potatoes, carrots and pumpkin and fry for a few minutes.

Now add the gound paste and stir into the vegetables. Once it is all mixed in, pour in the tamarind water and add salt to taste.

Let this boil for around ten minutes. Check to see if the vegetables are cooked. When the vegetables and shallots reached the almost cooked stage, add the cooked dal.

Let it boil well, check for seasoning and switch off the gas. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot with white rice.

Vazhakkai Masala Curry (Raw Green Bananas Masala Curry)

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I had the urge to try something different to the usual saturday cooking and so decided to make this raw green banana curry. I usually make this with just salt, red chilli powder and turmeric powder with a tadka of mustard, asafoetida and some curry leaves. Today was different. Here’s what I did.

Vazhakkai Masala Curry

Ingredients:

–   4-5 vazhakkais (raw green bananas), peeled and cubed

–   3 tbsps oil

–   1 tsp mustard seeds

–   ½ tsp turmeric powder

–   A pinch of asafoetida

–   3-4 sprigs curry leaves

To be ground into a coarse paste

–   4 tbsps fresh, grated cocounut

–   2 tsps coriander seeds

–   2 tsps cumin seeds

–   1 tsp fennel seeds (saunf)

–   6-8 dried red chillies

–   A small pebble-sized ball of tamarind

Method:

Grind to a coarse paste the ingredients for the paste, using as little water as possible.

In a deep bottomed pan, heat the oil and add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds splutter, add the asafoetida, turmeric powder and curry leaves.

Next put the ground masala paste and sauté it for a few minutes. Now add the cubed vazhakkai and mix well. Add salt to taste. At this point, if you feel the curry is not spicy enough, you can add some red chilli powder also. Let it cook well and enjoy. This goes well with rice and dal or sambhar.

Verdict: This was a very different from what we normally eat for this vegetable. It was spicy, but not overtly spicy and my children could eat it with complaining. There was also a tangy undertone to the curry due to the tamarind in the masala which I liked a lot!

Baby Potatoes in Yoghurt Gravy – Kashmiri Dum Aloo

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I wanted to make something different for lunch today and searched for an exotic, yet easy to make recipe, something involving potatoes and yoghurt. I came across this yummy recipe by Honey from Honey, what’s cooking. I followed her recipe almost to the tee and so will not show the recipe here, but here’s the link if you want to read/see it. She’s got photos of the entire process so it’s easy even for a non-cook. Here’s how mine came out.

Verdict: It was tasty and not very spicy as I controlled the spice factor in the recipe. BB & S can’t eat spicy food and so all my cooking has to be less spicy than I like. I also made Pudina/Mint rice to go with this and will blog about this soon. I also made it a bit more watery than usual, but this was because I was going to eat this with rice. I would make this more thick if I was to eat it with rotis. This would also be an excellent accompaniment to rotis/chapattis/puris/nans.