Paneer and Vegetable Kurma

Paneer and Vegetable Kurma


I am not sure why I end up postponing the use of paneer and leave it almost to the use by date. This time again, I had a pack of paneer that I had to finish off soon and was looking for a good but different paneer dish. Sometimes the downside with paneer dishes could be the fact that it lacks vegetables other than onion and tomato. I wanted to ensure we get a good load of vegetables along with the paneer. While browsing Tarla Dalal’s website, I found this rather simple kurma recipe and seemed like exactly what I was looking for. I made ever so tiny tweaks like not grinding the chillies separate and including it with onion but otherwise the recipe was fairly simple and stuck with it. If you would like to keep the fat down, you could use semi-skimmed milk instead of whole milk. I had made a fresh batch of garam masala and this was the first dish I made with it. As it was homemade, the quantity of masala needed is so much lesser than what I would add from a store bought packet. This recipe will serve two and I was glad that the dish was all gone quickly. Here is the recipe…

½ cup cubed paneer
1 large onion, pureed
3 green chillies, pureed along with onions
3 cloves
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 green cardamoms
1 cup milk
2-3 cups of mixed vegetables like peas, carrot, cauliflower, babycorn, beans
½ bell pepper, chopped
Handful of coriander leaves
1 teaspoon ginger garlic paste
½ teaspoon garam masala
Salt to taste
Cooking oil

Heat some oil in a kadai and add the cumin seeds, cloves, cardamom, bay leaf

After the seeds brown, add the onion chilly paste, ginger garlic paste and fry stirring often. After about five minutes add little water so it does not burn. Fry until the raw smell goes away

Add the vegetables including bell pepper, half the milk, about half cup water and cook on low flame until vegetables turn tender

Now add paneer, salt, garam masala and rest of the milk and simmer for about five minutes

Add coriander leaves and serve hot with roti/rice.