Make a fresh start with Matar Paneer (India)

If you've never cooked Indian before, you can take a great start with Matar Paneer (peas with baked Indian cheese). It's a very simple recipe that requires only a few key ingrediënts, so not much that can go wrong! On top of that, it's just extremely tasty (next to pea soup with bacon, my favourite way to eat my not-so-favourite-veggie). Those golden cubes of butter-creamy cheese are divine. It's also quick to make and heats up well the next day (actually, it even tastes better). So go find a reason not to go ahead and try...







Aside from peas (obviously), there are only 3 more key-ingrediënts: Paneer or Indian cheese which you can find in Indian/Pakistan shops but maybe also in your organic supermarket. Ghee (clarified butter) which gives it a distinct flavour and Garam Masala (an Indian spice mix) you may find in both as well. I always go for flavourfull organic frozen peas. 






200g paneer
400g (frozen) peas
2 el ghee
1 small onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 cm fresh ginger *
1 whole fresh or dried (green) chilipeper and/or a bit of chilipowder**
1/2 teaspoon garam masala

* the ginger is pretty essential here, it balances the garam masala out. So if you want the perfect taste (in my opinion) it's a matter of neither of those to take the upper hand when you savour the dish. If you taste one more than the other, add some more of the lesser one. 
** I prefer a combination of whole and powdered chilipeper, the powder seems to add sharpness whereas the the whole chilipeper seems to create a depth of warmth, but that could be entirely my imagination! 

1. Cut the paneer into bitsizes, I like to have a piece in every mouthfull. Bake them on medium high in the clarified butter (it will already smell amazing at this point) until golden. Do not make the same mistake as I always do and overbake them to get them extra crunchy, they will go dry inside, you don't want to loose the soft, smooth creaminess on the inside... Put the baked paneer aside and continu with your buttered pan. 
2. Bake the onion just a little, add 5 tablespoons of water and a touch of salt, bring to a boil. Lower the heat and add the peas and sugar. Let simmer with a lid on for about 5 minutes. 
3. Now reintroduce the paneer, add the chilipeper, ginger and garam masala and continue to bake for a few more minutes until all the flavours have blended. Taste and serve with rice. It's really really as simple as that.

Vegetable Biryani from Dinesh

I'm excited to have my first guest-writing sharing an authentic Indian recipe with me!!

Dinesh Kumar is an ingeneer from Kanpur (North-India, state of Uttar Pradesh), who lives since 2 years in Brussels for his Phd-research. He has also lived a few years in Bangalore (South-India) and one year in South-Korea.

                                        

this is what he has to say about his Vegetable Biryani : 

"I always use this basic and simple recipe to make various kind of dishes. I just learnt cooking from my experiments: variation in spices and ingredients.

Here is what I follow and cook awesome dishes. Its very simple, after 2-3 experiments you can also cook nice and tasty food. "

Ingredients: Basmati rice, mixed vegetables, onion, tomato, garam masala*, coriander powder, turmeric powder. * (garam masala is a mixure of indian spices you can find easily at nearest Indian grocery store.)

1.      Cook rice nicely

2.      Chop 2 onions

3.      Heat the oil, add cumin seeds (1 tea spoon), or mustard seeds (half spoon).

4.      Fry nicely chopped onion until golden brown. Add salt according to taste.

5.      Add the finely chopped mixed vegetables and fry for 6-8 minutes.

6.      Add garam masala powder 1 tea spoon.

7.       Add chopped tomato and fry it for 2-3 minutes.

8.       Add the cooked rice and stir well to combine

9.       Heat it for 4-5 minutes. Add a tea spoon of lemon juice or ghee.

Enjoy your meal!!!!!

Variations: Keep doing different experiments to make something new:

- Instead of rice you can use boil noodles .  It will become a new dish! Try vegetable noodles. 

- You can use macaroni or pasta  instead of rice.

- You can add boiled eggs  also after step 5.

- You can make omelette and can add after step 6.

- You can add the ½ teaspoon ginger powder, garlic or  black peperwith garam masala at step 6 to vary the taste.

Dinesh Kumar