Chef musings

So it was a long weekend and my inner MasterChef had been badgering me for a chance to make restaurant level food at home in a healthier twist.

Challenges were, in a family of 5, one person doesn’t favor dairy product, one doesn’t like bell pepper, one is choosy about what to eat and another needs it on time.

After a successful debut of naan making, I decided to try out romali roti at home. I have always found it pretty fancy fine dine bread. To go with it I wanted to cook a dish of paneer, the flavors of which we hadn’t tried before. So I googled bunch of recipes and tried on my own.

For the romali roti I took around a cup of maida(refined flour), 2 cups of aata(wheat flour), a dash of salt and 1/3 glass of milk(the steel ones we have for water). Made a soft dough by mixing the ingredient and additional half glass water (added as and when needed) and a bit of oil at the end. kept it covered and aside for ~3.5 hrs.

For the Paneer, I checked recipes for paneer korma, lababdar and kadai; out of which I picked the steps I liked and proceeded to make a recipe.

For ingredients, I needed:

3 medium onions, 2 inch ginger, garlic as per taste, 3 medium tomatoes, 2 small capsicums, khada masala(2 bay leaf, 2 black cardamom, 3 pod of green cardamom, 5–6 black pepper, 4 cloves, 1 teaspoon cumin), 5 almonds, 5 cashews, 2 dry red chili, 2 tablespoon cream, pinch of kasuri methi, chilli powder, tumeric, oil, salt and sugar.

Paneer 500 gm.

Method:

Peel the onions and cut into quarters, take outer 3 layers for 6 pieces and keep it aside, remaining onion cut into thin slices.

Make ginger julienne of half the ginger and keep aside remaining of gg paste.

Roughly dice the tomatoes .

Dice capsicums in medium chunks.

Make gg paste and keep it aside.

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a pan, add khada masala toss it for 30 sec, then add onion and sauté till it becomes dark golden in color, turn heat to low.

Add tomatoes, almond, cashew, dry chili. Toss them for around 2 mins, add pinch salt and turmeric for faster cooking, mix and keep it covered. After 2 mins, add half cup water. let it simmer for 5 min, turn off the gas.

After the pre-gravy mixture is cooled enough, keep it in a mixer jar.

Put the clean pan back on the stove, and heat up some oil and fry around 400 gm of cubed Paneer, sprinkled with a pinch of black pepper and salt, keep aside after brown crust has developed on both sides of paneer. Heat up some olive oil(butter if you like it). Add chili powder, sauté a bit and then add gg paste before chili powder can burn(it has for me, pretty badly). Sauté till gg paste leaves raw smell, add diced onion and capsicums and a bit of salt.

While it is cooking, make a paste from pre-gravy mixture. Add water to adjust consistency of the paste. Add the gravy mixture to the cooking onion and capsicums.

Adjust the consistency with some water, after a min add the cream, kasuri methi. Check for salt and add a little sugar. grate the remining 100 gm paneer into the gravy.

Simmer for 5 mins with covered lid, add Panner. Garnish with coriander.

For the roti, keep an upturn kadhai and put some salt water on it. Roll the roti to really thin spread and put on the upturn kadhai. Let it cook both side.

And viola, the fancy dinner spread is ready to chow down, made even more special with custard for dessert.