Paneer Vegetable Delight

Usually when we sit idle working on our site or simply harvesting at Facebook or murdering the Mafia we really feel lazy and not have anything for dinner. But what can you do when your plans go awry? Actually in our case we felt hungry :-p So Sumi ran and looked into the fridge and there we had Paneer (Cottage Cheese). Our quickest option in such cases is Grilled Paneer. But guess what Sumi decided to go for something rich in masala and oil – typical Indian style. Presenting Paneer Vegetable Delight……

Ingredients

1/2 Cauliflower cut into medium sized florets
3 medium sized potatoes sliced into thin pieces
200gm cottage cheese cut diagonally into 1 inch cubes
10-12 cauliflower tender leaves/stems from inner part of cauliflower (optional)
1 medium sized capsicum sliced thin
1 onion cut into thin slices
4 green chillies cut diagonally
2 tbsp onion paste
4 tbsp tomato paste/puree
1 tbsp ginger-garlic paste
2 tbsp curd
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp whole garam masala
1/4 tsp asafoetida (optional)
1 tsp garam masala powder
1 tsp Kitchen King powder
1/4 – 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
2 tbsp oil
Extra oil to shallow fry
A pinch of sugar
Salt to taste

Method

Heat oil in a non-stick wok, add green chilli, cauliflowers (along with tender leaves) and capsicum and shallow fry them for around 5 minutes in medium flame till the cauliflower florets turn light golden color. Make sure you keep turning the vegetables for the entire 5 mins. Now take the vegetables out and dry out the oil and keep them aside.

Take the paneer pieces and stir fry for 1 minutes till they turn light brown. Keep it aside.

Use around 2 tbsp of the oil (that you used during shallow frying) and heat it in a pressure cooker/pan. In sequence first add whole garam masala, cut onions (with a pinch of salt and sugar – prevents onion from burning), onion paste, ginger garlic paste and all the spices and keep stirring in medium flame for 5 minutes. Now add the tomato paste (or puree) and curd and keep stirring in medium to high flame for 2 minutes. Now add the potatoes and cook in medium flame for 5 minutes. Take care the spices get mixed and cooked evenly. You may add around 50ml of water if you feel that there is no oil left. This prevents addition of more oil and the spices move around freely and get cooked evenly.

Once the potatoes get cooked, add the remaining vegetables you kept aside in the first step and keep turning all the ingredients.

Finally add the stir fried paneer cubes into the vegetables, close the cooker lid and in high flame wait for 1 whistle and after that immediately drain out the remaining steam (otherwise the cauliflowers become very soft).

Take out the lid.

You may garnish it with fresh coriander leaves.

Serve it with any Indian bread or simply plain old bread (I had it with bread actually )