Paneer Khurchan - Spiced Cottage Cheese

Paneer khurchan is a relatively new find for me. I have been eating various curries and dishes (spicy and sweet) made from paneer for years, ever since I can remember. However, I hadn't heard of this dish till about a couple of years ago. My husband was reminiscing about his good old college days and he mentioned that occasionally whenever his friend and he went out to dinner, this was a dish they always used to order. Then he asked me, if it was something that I could make. Of course, never having eaten sit, I thought I would give it a shot based on his description. I am not sure if the final result is exactly what he ate, but it turned out really good. It has become one of my go to recipes when I invite guests. It is easy to make and very tasty.

Ingredients
1 green bell pepper (medium), sliced into strips
1 red/yellow/orange (or a mix of colors) bell pepper, sliced into strips
1 tomato, sliced into strips
a 3X3X1 inch slab of paneer (if using ready made). If you make it at home then paneer resulting from about 1-1.5 litre of milk. Approximately 1.5 to 2 cups.
3 cloves of garlic, ground
1 medium red onion, sliced into strips
1 tbsp oil
1/8 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 cup tomato puree (or puree 2 tomatoes)
1/2 - 1 tsp red chilli powder, to taste
salt to taste

Method
Heat the oil in a flat pan. Then add the cumin seeds. Once they start to crackle, add the onions and garlic. Fry it for a minute and then add the bell pepper slices. Stir fry for another minute and then add the tomato strips. Once the vegetables are partially cooked (about 2-3 minutes), add the tomato puree, chilli powder and the paneer. If using ready made paneer, cut it into small pieces and add it. If the paneer is freshly made, just add it without shaping and cutting it. Add salt.
Cook on low to medium heat. The paneer will start sticking to the base of the pan. Scrape it off and keep stirring it. Eventually the paneer will start melting and get scrambled. Cook till the paneer and vegetables are cooked through completely. You will get a nice buttery  fragrance as the paneer browns slightly. Do not let it burn. Make sure to brown the paneer a little. Do not stop the cooking process as soon as the paneer has melted and gotten scrambled. The browning adds a lot of flavor to the dish. Serve hot with roti or naan.

Tips
If you are using fresh paneer, you need not squeeze out all the whey water from the paneer. You can just drain it and then add the paneer to the vegetables. The water will evaporate as the paneer cooks down. Make sure to turn down the heat once the paneer reaches the scrambled stage as it can burn easily as it starts to brown and get stuck to the base of the pan. The recipe to make paneer at home can be found here.
You can grind up the leftovers and use it as stuffing for parathas the next day. 

Garden Pasta with Almond Basil Pesto Sauce and a Dinner Menu

Fresh pesto sauce is an absolute delight to the tastebuds. You get great readymade pesto in the grocery store and it is very handy to use, so if you don't have the ingredients or time to make, you can definitely use a store bought version. However, once you have tasted fresh pesto, you will not want to use the refrigerated version. The sweet basil, pungent garlic and creamy almonds make this a delectable dish. It is a very elegant dish and doesn't take a lot of time to make. It is just the perfect dinner party dish. You can scale it to make large quantities easily and it will impress your guests for sure.

Here is a great menu for your next dinner party. I am sure this will wow your guests.

Garlic Bread
Tomato Basil Bisque soup
Garden Pasta with Almond Basil Pesto Sauce

Ingredients
For the pesto
1 cup basil
5-6 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (or more to give the pesto a thick sauce consistency)
1 cup of almonds, peeled or blanched
salt to taste
pepper to taste (optional)

For the pasta
1 box (about 1 pound) of sphagetti - cook it per the directions on the box.
1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (pesto has a lot of oil in it already, so don't use a lot for the veggies)
3-4 cloves of garlic - finely diced
1 large yellow onion, sliced
1 cup bell pepper (red, yellow, orange), sliced
1 cup broccoli florets - blanched 
1 zucchini - sliced into semi circles
salt to taste

Method
To make the pesto

Add the basil, garlic, almonds to a food processor or blender. Add the salt and pepper and then start processing. As you process, add the olive oil through the feed tube in the processor/blender. Add just enough oil so that the resultant mixture has a  thick sauce like consistency. If it's too little, it will not spread well when added to the pasta and if its too much then the taste will get diluted and the pesto will not stick to the pasta.

To make the pasta
Cook the pasta per instructions. You can keep it "al dente" where is slightly undercooked, or well done. If its "al dente" it has a slight bite to it. Keep this aside. Reserve the water the pasta was cooked in.

Heat the oil in a broad pan, to this add the garlic. Once you start getting the aroma of garlic being cooked, add the onion slices. Cook these till the onion begins to get transparent. Then add the bell pepper, cook for a couple of minutes. Then add the zuccini slices. Next add the cooked broccoli and cook all the vegetables for another minute. Don't overcook the vegetables, they should still have a little bite and not be mushy. Season the vegetables with salt at this time. Remember there is some salt in the pesto, so add just a little salt. Then add the sphagetti and toss it well with the vegetables. If the pasta and vegetable mixture seems very dry at this point, add a little of the water reserved from cooking the pasta and mix. Turn off the heat. Then pour the desired amount of the pesto sauce over the warm sphagetti and toss well to coat the vegetables and the sphagetti with pesto. Garnish with a basil leaf and grated parmesan (parmigiano reggiano) cheese.

Tips
There are many varieties of basil available, so make sure you are picking up the one used in Italian cooking and it's not the sweet basil used in Thai food because the tastes are starkly different. Most pesto recipes call for a lot of olive oil. I try to use as little oil as possible in my preparations, so you can increase the oil in the pesto based on your preference and how much oil you need to get to the sauce consistency.
To blanch the broccoli, boil water and add the broccoli to it. Let it cook for a couple of minutes till you see it turn a bright green color. Keep a bowl of iced water ready and add the cooked broccoli to the iced water so that it stops cooking. At this point, the broccoli will be semi-cooked and a lovely bright green.  To peel almonds, soak them in water overnight. Next morning, you will be able to easily peel off the skin. If you don't have the time to pre-soak it, add them to the boiling water and remove after a minute. This is similar to blanching the broccoli. Then peel the loosened skin. You also can buy blanched and sliced almonds from the store and use it directly.