PALAK PANEER recipe with pictures

I am not a great fan of home cooked food. But there are few stuff which tastes better home made. Since Sunday evening I got this huge craving for palak paneer. Finally, last evening I had palak paneer to my heart's content. Here goes the recipe. 

We got 1/2 kg Palak. Sufficient for two of us. I washed the palak thrice and cut off the roots. Holding palak from its end, I cut it in 2-3 sections and put in a pressure cooker along with one medium onion, 5-6 garlic cloves and a little salt. No additional water is required to blanch palak. Palak will leave ample water to cook itself. The palak was done in two  whistles and looked like this.

The next step was to turn it to a smooth paste using grinder. The paste must be smooth not watery.

Cooking also makes you a good multi-tasker. As I progressed with the above mentioned steps, I also had heated the wok,deep fried paneer, and started my preparation for frying palak. You may also put the paneer raw. I like it with a golden tint so I fried for a minute or two. It is important to dip paneer in hot salted water after frying. This restores the softness and also ensures that it is properly salted. The water left of soaked paneer can be used to cook or to prepare dough. Why leave anything nutritious unused  :) ??

In the next step it was time to fry the palak paste. I love the smell of whole spice; called khade masale in local language. Dalchini, laung and elaichi adds a flavourful twist to any dish. So the first step of frying palak was to add Khade Masale in heated oil. 3 cloves, 2 small cardamoms and an inch of dalchini (cinnamon)  were good. Cooking is a lot about experimenting. These khade masale could have been added while pressure cooking the palak or can be added at the end in powdered form after the palak paneer is almost cooked. 

After Khade Masale, I had put a small teaspoon full cumin seeds. After the cumin seeds spluttred and the crackling sound was over, a medium sized finely chopped tomato was added. You may add a big tomato if you like the tangy taste. Along with tomato I  added salt, a little turmeric powder, one teaspoon coriander powder and one teaspoon red chilli powder.

I also added one green chilli earlier as I have a soft corner for green chillies ;) and put it in every thing except for the sweet dishes. 

After the spices were cooked and left oil, the palak paste was mixed in it and fried for few minutes. It looked like this .....

After few minutes of frying, the paneer was mixed in and fried again for few minutes.

Cover and cook as much as possible to save fuel, cook fast and most importantly to avoid loosing the flavour. The Palak paneer is 90% ready. A little butter or ghee will complete it 100%. If you do not have "weighty issues", use ghee instead of oil for cooking and be assured to get this Palak Paneer craving very often ;)

Yesterday, even the phulkas turned out pretty good. And we had this amazing dinner of Dal Makhni, Palak Paneer and Phulkas.  Damn Yummy!! Check them out....

PS: It is difficult to concentrate on cooking and take good pictures at the same time, however I managed to take a few with my phone's cam. Recipes without pictures aren't quite appealing. Right??