Palak Paneer (Cottage Cheese in Spinach Curry) – Shack Saturdays Special

My better half and I wanted to have a healthy meal tonight. We have been focusing on fitness lately. 😉 I saw Spinach in the refrigerator but plain spinach sounded a little boring. So, I thought of adding some Cottage Cheese cubes to the Spinach and making the two into a popular Indian delicacy ‘Palak Paneer’.

Experience the unique taste of Spinach (Palak) and Cottage Cheese (Paneer), cooked with flavoured spices. Here’s the recipe of this delicious combination. I added a secret ingredient in this recipe… read on to find about it. 🙂

Preparation Time 15-20 minutes
Cooking Time 25-30 minutes
Servings 4
Main Ingredients Cottage Cheese & Spinach
Course Main-course
Level Of Cooking Medium

Ingredients

Cottage Cheese 250 grams cut into 1 inch cubes
Spinach 250 grams
Cumin seeds 1 teaspoon
Cloves 2
Cooking Oil 4 tablespoons
Black cardamom 1
Green cardamom 1
Onion finely ground 1 medium
Garlic paste 2 teaspoon
Ginger paste 1 teaspoon
Tomato 1 medium ground
Green chillies 2 ground with tomato
Turmeric powder 1/2 teaspoon
Red chilli powder 1 teaspoon
Coriander powder 1 teaspoon
Garam masala powder 1 teaspoon
Milk 1 tablespoon
Salt to taste

Method

Step 1
Grind spinach with 2 tablespoons of water and keep aside.

Step 2
Heat oil in a non-stick pan, add green cardamom, black cardamom, cumin seeds and cloves and sauté for a minute. Add onion and sauté till browned. Add garlic and ginger paste and sauté for a minute.

Step 3
Add turmeric powder, red chilli powder and coriander powder and mix well. Add salt, tomato and green chilli purée and cook further for five minutes.

Step 4
Add the Cottage Cheese cubes and stir for two-three minutes. Add ground spinach and garam masala powder and mix well. Cook for three-four minutes. Add the tablespoon of milk now and give a nice stir. Remove Cloves and Cardamoms (if you find any).

After this step, what I did (which is not necessary if you are making a Palak Paneer) was added the secret ingredient ‘White Button Mushrooms’ – diced and tossed separately in a pan with some salt an d black pepper powder. I added it to the mix of Spinach and Cottage Cheese. The dish became tastier and because we wanted to go for a healthy meal, it was exactly what we wanted and we licked our fingers.