Mattar Paneer literally means "peas and cheese," and it's one of our favorite Indian dishes. It has a velvety, spicy-sweet sauce complemented by the the flavor and texturally-pleasing burst of peas and the soft, tangy cheese. We love it at buffets and there's also a very decent canned version that we have eaten many nights when we didn't have time to cook. However, this was the first time we'd tried to make it ourselves.
The first thing to make is the sauce. To start, you dice and saute an onion.
Then you add a mix of spices including coriander, turmeric, paprika, and fresh ginger and garlic.
Plus a bunch of pureed tomatoes, which make up the base of the sauce.
Meanwhile, you cut your paneer into squares
and fry them in a little butter or oil.
Now, we'd both been feeling like some of our Indian cooking had an acidic edge, lacking the sort of delicate almost-sweetness we find so addictive at Indian restaurants. Scouring the Internet high and low, I finally found a recipe that noted that many restaurants add a "generous dollop of nut butter" to their Mattar Paneer. Thinking it over, we decided that could be the perfect thing to soften and mellow the flavor a little.
So we ground up some cashews with the hand blender, and blended the sauce so far.
Then we added the peas and cheese, a couple teaspoons of garam masala, and some salt and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, then served it over basmati rice.
The verdict? Amazing. The cashews ground into the sauce were absolutely the right way to go, and the flavors came together perfectly. We each ate a big bowl, and spent the rest of the afternoon finding excuses to go into the kitchen and eat more out of the pot.
One of the other things we pioneered with this recipe was using baking soda to cut the acidity of a cream dish to keep the cream from curdling. We read it (too late!) when making this tomato soup (which I will not photo-essay because it's already been done so well)--the recipe didn't call for it, but after ours curdled upon the addition of cream, we found that some of the comments suggested it. When you drop it in (we used a few teaspoons), it foams impressively, elementary-volcano-style; we also utilized the tip of mixing the cream into a little bowl of the hot, de-acidified sauce and then incorporating it slowly (so as not to "shock the dairy," one site advised). Thus we were able to seamlessly incorporate a splash of heavy cream into the matter paneer, with nary a curdle in sight. (Okay, except the ones we intentionally put there.)
We also made a delicious batch of sun tea...something I never enjoyed much when my mother would make it for me as a child, because we weren't allowed to add sugar. But now that Matt and I are the grownups in the house, we sweetened it liberally. And it was lovely :)
The first thing to make is the sauce. To start, you dice and saute an onion.
Then you add a mix of spices including coriander, turmeric, paprika, and fresh ginger and garlic.
Plus a bunch of pureed tomatoes, which make up the base of the sauce.
Meanwhile, you cut your paneer into squares
and fry them in a little butter or oil.Now, we'd both been feeling like some of our Indian cooking had an acidic edge, lacking the sort of delicate almost-sweetness we find so addictive at Indian restaurants. Scouring the Internet high and low, I finally found a recipe that noted that many restaurants add a "generous dollop of nut butter" to their Mattar Paneer. Thinking it over, we decided that could be the perfect thing to soften and mellow the flavor a little.
So we ground up some cashews with the hand blender, and blended the sauce so far.
Then we added the peas and cheese, a couple teaspoons of garam masala, and some salt and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, then served it over basmati rice.The verdict? Amazing. The cashews ground into the sauce were absolutely the right way to go, and the flavors came together perfectly. We each ate a big bowl, and spent the rest of the afternoon finding excuses to go into the kitchen and eat more out of the pot.
One of the other things we pioneered with this recipe was using baking soda to cut the acidity of a cream dish to keep the cream from curdling. We read it (too late!) when making this tomato soup (which I will not photo-essay because it's already been done so well)--the recipe didn't call for it, but after ours curdled upon the addition of cream, we found that some of the comments suggested it. When you drop it in (we used a few teaspoons), it foams impressively, elementary-volcano-style; we also utilized the tip of mixing the cream into a little bowl of the hot, de-acidified sauce and then incorporating it slowly (so as not to "shock the dairy," one site advised). Thus we were able to seamlessly incorporate a splash of heavy cream into the matter paneer, with nary a curdle in sight. (Okay, except the ones we intentionally put there.)
We also made a delicious batch of sun tea...something I never enjoyed much when my mother would make it for me as a child, because we weren't allowed to add sugar. But now that Matt and I are the grownups in the house, we sweetened it liberally. And it was lovely :)
1 comment:
AWWWW, our carefree photos are next to sun tea...woo hoo :)
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