Tia's Paneer ala Anushka Sharma

Tia, my kid sister has a knack to cook all not so Bengali recipes...Bangali khabar is for the house wives she says. I am sure she will understand the lack of logic behind her thought some day...but as of now she refuses to cook Bengali food.

Anything which can be made in a jiffy is her forte... Pastas, aromatic rice dishes,Prawns and chicken dishes which do not take ages to cook....nothing that should take more than half hour to finish off.

I, on the other hand, like creating all the elegant recipes. I love all my mochar ghonto, borar dalna, dhoka and muri ghontos....and also the biriyanis and pulaos...even if they take ages to make.

So we get into these fights....where she champions her 5 minute recipes and I keep on bragging about traditional recipes and tell her off for taking the easy way out.

Tia found out about this Paneer recipe in a cookery show featuring Anushka Sharma. The actress said her mom cooks this for her all the time. I refuse to believe her although....Paneer with cream and cashew does not gel well with a tending towards size zero woman I say. Otherwise she would need a BMR touching the sky.

Anyways, this recipe my sister liked instantly....If Anushka can cook it in 20 minutes straight, then definitely she can cook it in lesser time...absolutely her kind of recipe.

I sniggered when I heard about this...which good paneer dish other than a stir fry could be cooked in 15mins? Paneer recipes had to be creamy and had to be simmered on low flame to bring out the creaminess right? Even paneer bhurji takes more than 15mins to prep and cook.

Then she insisted to cook it for us that night. Ohh! I was bowled over by this one...creamy it was...not overly spicy neither too mild...just right in taste..it was an epiphany I guess...I would have never believed otherwise that creamy goodness of slowly cooked paneer could be recreated in 15mins following a recipe which had just 10 ingredients.

Tia had a smug look on her face which was screaming "I told you so" on my face.

Since then this has been my savior. Whenever I am in dearth of time, someone comes down for dinner suddenly this is my go-to dish. And it never fails to impress.


Servings: 4

Ingredients:

About 300gm paneer chopped into 1.5 cm cubes.
1 tsp. cardamom powder
1.5 tsp. ginger paste
half tsp. haldi
half tsp. Kashmiri mirch powder
1/3 cup. tomato puree
2/3 tsp. garam masala powder
5 green chilies chopped
1 tbsp. cashew paste
2 tbsps. cream and a tsp. to garnish
1.5 tbsps. oil
Salt

Recipe:

Heat oil. Add the cardamom powder followed by ginger paste. Once the rawness of the ginger disappears, add the haldi and Kashmiri mirch powder. Sprinkle some water.

After few stirs add the tomato puree and cashew paste. Follow that with the garam masala powder. Once all masalas are cooked properly add the paneer, chilis and salt. I add a pinch of sugar also.

Add the cream, give it a quick stir and let it bubble for a min.

Garnish with cream and some coriander maybe. And voila!!