Matar Paneer

I've been hit by the cooking bug! I read the other day that peas have a lot if fiber (1 cup to 16.5 g of fiber, adult male intake: 39 g required per day and for a woman 28 g required per day) and I wanted to make something out of them.

And all I could think of was matar paneer... now before you think that this is an everyday recipe let's remember that I'm from a South Indian household. Sambar and idlys qualify as normal everyday food. As a matter of fact, to memory neither my mother nor I had ever made this before. So the usual happened... online research. I got lucky today.. found a recipe that I thought was do-able at the first go. Altered it a little bit to suit our tastes and here it goes!

Grocery List

200 gms Paneer 1 cup cooked Green Peas (frozen peas, boiled) Paste 1 Onion 1 Tomato 1 Green Chilli 1 tsp Ginger or 1 inch ginger 1 tsp Garlic or 7 garlic cloves Powders 1/2 tsp Coriander Powder 1 tbsp Poppy Seeds 1 tsp Roasted cumin powder 1/2 tsp Turmeric Powder 1 tbsp butter 1/2 tsp chaat masala; Everest brand 1/2 tsp shahee paneer masala; Everest brand- found it in the freezer :) 3 Cloves 1 tsp Red Chilli Powder 1 tsp Garam Masala Powder (didn't use this) 2 Bay Leaves (didn't use this) 1/4 tsp Black Pepper Powder (didn't use this) Vegetable oil Salt to taste Green Coriander Leaves (chopped) 2 tbsp butter Method 1. Put one cup of peas in boiling hot water, give them a minute to boil with the hot water and then turn everything off and leave them in there till required for cooking. I got frozen peas for this recipe & I think it's important that the peas are not cooked too well for this recipe, because they're better off sweet and soft than pasty and hard. 2. Cube a 200g packet of paneer, all up I got 16 cubes of paneer and then drop them in hot oil till golden brown. It helps to have them fry over medium heat and semi-deep fried. 3. Make a paste out of the chopped ingredients from the paste ingredients. Make it as fine as possible. 4. Then drop the paste in some hot oil (use little at first and then keep adding if you find that the paste sticks to the pan). Fry it for about 8 minutes, to bring out a deep red/orange colour from the tomatoes. 5. Add the powders to the mixture and fry for a minute, and then add 1 cup water. 6. Add paneer and peas and boil down for 5 mins. Garnish with chopped coriander leaves & swirl butter into the dish.