I love paneer as much as I love Chicken. And when Paneer is complimented with mushrooms, the dish just outshines any other dish. As soon as I got paneer and button mushrooms in my stock, I started Googling for a good Indian recipe.
Internet is full of Paneer Mushroom recipes and the bloggers have shown ample love for this dish on the internet. Finally, as confused as I could get with thousands of recipes overflowing on W.W.W., I decided to use my instincts and prepare the dish. It was definitely not my invention but an adroit combination of internet recipes and my mother’s shahi paneer recipe.
Here goes the recipe:-
INGREDIENTS:-
The biggest pain was to clean the mushrooms. Thank god for Google, else I wouldn’t have known half the things I know now :)). I discovered that different people have different ways of cleaning mushrooms. My mother cuts off the stem and cleans out the brown hairy part with a knife before slicing the mushrooms. This reduces the mushroom quantity to a great extent. So, I was not convinced with this method. People in the west don’t like washing mushrooms under running water. They recommend wiping the dirt off using a damp cloth. After going through couple of blogs, I decided that neither i am going to clean off the mushroom stem or hairy part, nor I am going to avoid cleaning it under running water. The inside of mushrooms, including the hairy part is all edible. It just looks gross and hence some people clean it up. This is what I did to clean up mushrooms.
Lightly washed the manure and dirt off mushrooms under running water
Wipe it dry
Peeled off the thin covering on the mushroom button
Sliced it vertically taking the stem along
Next, I stir fried the mushrooms. This step takes out all water from mushrooms and it becomes smaller in size. This is how it looks after frying
Next step, I deep fried the cubed paneer pieces and soaked in hot salty water to retain its softness.
Cleaning, chopping and frying the ingredients forms a major part of the whole cooking job. Thankfully this part is over by now. Now we just need to prepare the gravy base and cook it all together. I wanted the base to be rich and spicy and full of flavor.
The wok was piping hot with oil in it. I started by putting a bay leaf in it.
This was followed by half a teaspoon cumin seeds and after they spluttered, paste of onion ginger and garlic was mixed in.
The most important question while cooking is to figure out how long every step takes and how to know when it is done. The best hint for this is to be watchful of the color. The onion paste will turn crispy brown when it is done. You know how does brown look like; to figure out what does crispy brown look like, you will have to run your imagination's search engine ;)
After successfully achieving the crisp brown color, add in the dry spices. Turmeric powder + Red chili powder + coriander powder + jeera powder. Add tomato puree and salt
Mix well. Cover and cook on medium flame. When oil separates from the spices, you know that the spices are done and the raw smell of the tomato is gone. I feel the most crucial part of cooking is when you cook the spices, tomato and onion together. That is what decides how good the dish will turn out.
Now warm 1/2 cup water and mix in the spice paste in the wok and keep stirring. Mix in the fried mushroom pieces and Paneer pieces dipped in warm water. Stir and mix well. Let it cook on medium flame for 3-4 minutes.
Add a pinch kasoori methi. Add some more warm water to wok now to increase the gravy. Do not add too much water. The dish must have a thick and rich gravy base.
After cooking for 3-4 minutes, garnish it with chopped coriander and half teaspoon garam masala. Decorate with layers of fresh cream.
PS:- Cooking it in clarified butter will give the dish a tastier twist. But also add layers of fat to this already rich and high calorie dish :)
