Palaak Paneer and Looking to the Weekend (Paneer, Pirozhki)

Tonight I made some tasty Palaak Paneer. This is Indian style creamed spinach, with cheese cubes. There were a few minor things I'll do different next time, but overall it was good. Traditionally, saag is greens (of any kind) cooked in cream. Usually mustard greens are used, or a mix of mustard greens and spinach. When just spinach is used, it is palaak. I prefer the version with a mix of mustard greens and spinach, so if you can get mustard greens, use them!

Palaak Paneer

Ingredients:

2 T oil
1 small onion
1 large clove garlic
1 T minced ginger
1 T gharam masala*
1 t tumeric
1 pod black cardamom
1 pod green cardamom
2 whole peppercorns
2 cloves
salt to taste
Squeeze of lemon
1 T cream
About 750 grams frozen, chopped spinach
Paneer cheese cubes-as many as you want

*Gharam masala is a spice mix. Usually, it has spices like cardamom, cinnamon, maybe clove, some black pepper. It's not 100% authentic to put cumin and coriander in, but most store mixes do it. I make my own, and I also put cumin and coriander in, because I happen to like them! I also put in a tiny bit of chili powder, some ground black pepper, some ground cardamom, and some ground fenugreek. You can basically experiment and find a mix you like. It's what I did. Once I found it, I made a big batch and put it in a spice jar.

Method:

Warm the oil in a pot. Chop the onion, mince the garlic and ginger. When the oil is shimmery, add them to the pot. Sautee till soft, but not brown. Push the mix to one side of the pot, and pool the oil in the other side. Fry the gharam masala and the tumeric in the oil for about 30 seconds, then stir everything together. Add the spinach and remaining spices. Allow to cook until spinach has thawed, heated through, and excess water has evaporated. At this point, salt to taste, stir in paneer, allow to warm through. Stir in cream, lemon juice and serve.

Notes: Make sure your ginger is minced! My ginger got frozen (dumb malfunctioning fridge--long story) and thawed. It was really tough to cut (but very easy to peel!), and I ended up with a couple of big lumps of ginger. I think I may add a little more spice next time. Maybe a split dried chili pod. We didn't have paneer. I've *tried* to use cubes of other white cheeses before and it fails. You see, paneer is special. It doesn't melt. That's why it can be cut into cubes and put into curries. We had in the fridge a block of fresh white pressed farmer's cheese from a recent trip to Holland. I thought, "Well, maybe, what the hell," since that's basically what paneer is--pressed farmer's cheese. It wasn't a failure. The cubes got mushier than paneer would've, but not really melty like with previous efforts.

Serving Suggestion: This is best with lemon juice, rice and roti. You can eat with yogurt too (it's important to have something a little acidic with it), but I prefer lots of lemon!

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Speaking of paneer, that brings me to the second half of this post, "Looking to the Weekend." This weekend I want to try something ambitious, cooking wise. I'm going to try to make paneer, which is similar to the Russian cheese tvorog. I also want to try and make something with yeast. I've been making Indian flat breads recently, and baking a little more (brownies, cookies, sharlotka). This is slowly but surely breaking my fear of bread and baked goods (even though I DID burn 3 cookies tonight).

So I want to try something more complicated than flat breads. I want to try ... something with YEAST.

I was thinking of trying to make Russian pirozhki. They look so good! Look at that mushroom filling! I love mushrooms so much. This site has a recipe that seems like it'll do. I've used (with a little tweaking) recipes from that site with favorable results. But I'm going to spend some time searching for THE ONE. I mean, it'll be my first time with yeast. It should be special!