Diary Recipes

Paneer Korma Resturant Style

Ingredients
Paneer / Indian Cottage Cheese - 2 cups
Onion chopped - 1 no
Tomatoes - 2 no
Ginger and garlic paste - 1 tsp
Red chilli powder - 1 and 1/4 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
Garam masala powder - 1 tsp
Kasuri methi leaves - 1 tsp
Cashew nuts - 5 nos
Roasted Poppy seeds - 1 tsp
Grated coconut - 2 tbsp
Cardamom - 2 pods
Butter - 2 tbsp
Fresh thick cream - 1/4 cup
Salt to taste

Paneer Kurma for Chapathi

Method
1. Chop the paneer into cubes, deep fry in oil until lightly browned, drain and set aside( or soak paneer cubes in hot water for 10 mins, drain and set aside to make it soft).
2. Blanch the tomatoes in hot water for 10 minutes or until skin of tomato slightly shrinks. Remove tomatoes skin and chop it coarsely.
3. Heat 1 tbsp butter in a pan, when butter starts to melt add chopped onions and sauté till onions are soft.
4. Add the ginger and garlic paste to the pan and sauté until raw smell leaves.
5. Add the blanched and chopped tomatoes, cardamom, red chilli powder, turmeric powder, garam masala powder, cashew nuts, poppy seeds and grated coconut to the pan, stir well for 3 minutes on low heat. Remove pan from heat and allow mixture to cool.
6. Once tomato mixtures reaches room temperature, grind this mixture in blender until smooth.
7. Wipe the same pan and return to heat, add 1 tbsp butter and add the ground masala paste, stir well on low heat.
8. Add 1 cup water to the pan, stir well and loosen the gravy.
9. Increase heat bring gravy to boil, add paneer cubes to boiling gravy and season with required salt. Let the korma boil for 2 minutes.
10. Finally garnish paneer korma with crushed kasuri methi and thick cream, stir well and serve with ghee rice or hot pulkas.

Chefs tips
1. Since everyone in my home loves paneer I used 2 cups you can use 1 to 1.5 cups paneer for this recipe.
2. Using fresh cream gives richness to the recipe, its optional to use cream.
3. I used Kashmiri red chilli powder in this recipe to get bright orange color, if using ordinary red chilli powder use food color to get the color.

Its time to launch another month of Dish of the Month a blog event to celebrate the recipes of Nigel Slater. If you tweet your recipe @realnigelslater he might even reply to you some of last months entrants found out.  Check it out in the February Dish of the Month round up. Some of us are cooking our way month by month through The kitchen diaries II, however you can make any dish from any of Nigels books or use the on line recipes. The full rules are shown at the bottom of the post.

My Dish of the Month for is from March 16th in the Kitchen Diaries II. its an adaptation of Nigels Pork shoulder with ginger and anise.  I didnt have a pork shoulder, but I did have two huge and delicious Saddleback Pork Chops provided to me for review by Farmison its a really simple slow cooked recipe packed with flavour.

All the gorgeous meat I got from the two Saddleback Pork Chops

I managed to make the two chops stretch to feed three of us and the flavours of the ginger and anise were outstanding,  I would definitely make this again.  If you use the pork shoulder, the recipe is designed to provide leftovers for some further dishes which is great idea.

This month I am delighted to say that one entrant will win a 2.8L Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl and a Medium Silicone Spatula from the lovely people at OXO Good Grips.  Products from OXO Good Grips are of  the highest standards of design and manufacture, a delight to own and use.  The winner will be chosen by Random Number Generator when the Linky closes on 28th March. The prize draw is for UK residents only but anyone can join in and share their recipe on the Dish of the Month Linky.




If you would like to take part, then please:

• Make a Dish of the Month from ANY recipe by Nigel Slater
• Link to Farmersgirl Kitchen or A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate
•  Use the Dish of the Month logo in your post
• If you use twitter, tweet your post with @serialcrafter or @Heavenona_plate and #DishoftheMonth and we will re-tweet it to our followers. 

Rules:

• If you own The kitchen diaries II please do not publish the recipes on your blog without permission, they are copyright.
• If you are using recipes from the BBC Food website, please link to the recipe on BBC Food rather than publishing the recipe.  Likewise recipes on the Guardian Lifestyle website.
• One entry per blog.
• Recipes must be added to the linky by the 28th of each month.

The round up for Dish of the Month is now live over at A little bit of Heaven on a Plate
 Add your Dish of the Month to the linky below:
);

Brew some good, strong coffee, adding some caraway seeds before brewing. If you grind your own, throw some caraway seeds in the grinder along with the coffee beans. Im not going to offer any measurements, as peoples tastes vary widely where coffee in concerned, and the amount of caraway should be adjusted to taste.

-For a truly adult version of caraway coffee, make a "Black Russian" with fresh, hot coffee and use brennivín instead of vodka. To add a bit of brennivín ("að gefa út í") is a tradition still honoured by some Icelanders, and there are stories of caraway coffee sometimes arousing the (happy) suspicion that the hostess has put "a little something extra" in the coffee.

Hi everyone my friend Mansi Desai from Fun and Food tagged me to write a few things about myself using the letters of my middle name. I dont have a middle name so I used the word Honey instead. Honey could be a name but it is also my favourite sweet! So here goes .....

Happy - I try to be happy about things in life because even when things are not so good, you can always be in a worse situation than the one your currently in. I think its best to laugh at the silly things in life rather than stress over them. We cant be happy 24/7 but I think it sure is a great idea to try!

Oats - I eat oats for my breakfast at least 3-4 times a week. Porridge is my favourite breakfast of all time! It all started one winter when we were kids and we ate a lot of porridge for snacks because it was warm. I have ate it ever since and love it.

Nature - I love nature, animals and plants etc are fascinating to me. I love breathing in the fresh air of the out doors. There are a lot of beautiful places in the world, where ever there is nature I think there is beauty. :)

Everlasting Love - I love my husband and kids soooo much! The love I feel for my family is ever lasting and so very precious. That is why it is great to enjoy cooking so I can please my family and make them happy with what I cook for them. Eating is a privilege in this world that is why it is good to enjoy your food and have fun with it. :)

Yellow - Egg yolks, Honey, Buttercups, Sunflowers, ducks, lemons and so many more reasons to like this colour. Its bright and vibrant and one of my favourite colours.


I hope you liked reading the 5 things about myself. Now my job is to tag some more bloggers so we can all get to know some more people better. So here are my tags...