Parampara Palak Paneer

Ok now for a less geeky post, and back to one of my favourite topics: food! So last nite I had a couple friends over for dinner and I was wondering what to cook that would be tasty and not take too long since after a long day at work I wasn't too keen on slaving away for an hour or more. I went with (thanks to Milly for putting me onto this) Indian and made Palak Paneer, which is essentially a form of Indian cottage cheese in a spicy spinach sauce. Mmmm and it was yummy if I do say so myself :).

I could have paneer every day if it wasn't so fattening (it's cheese after all); it's a good source of protein, it soaks up flavours really easily, and it can take heating up much better than any other cheese I've seen -- it doesn't crumble, and it doesn't melt! It's like tofu in a lot of ways (but like I said, a lot more fattening!).

The real discovery for me was Parampara sauce mix -- so easy and far tastier than any Indian-out-of-a-jar I've ever had before. Honestly, my previous home-cooked efforts at Indian cuisine have fallen far short of what I've enjoyed at a restaurant, but this Parampara stuff comes pretty close! Slice up the paneer into cubes, dice some onion, add water and some plain yoghurt to the sauce mix, simmer and you're done!

And I also discovered this "Malaysian paratha" that comes frozen and you just heat it up in the frying pan; it's just like the Malaysian roti that you can get at any decent Malay restaurant, but not quite so flakey.

Cook up some basmati in the rice cooker, fry up some paratha, simmer some paneer and you have a complete, filling, yummy meal in less than 30 minutes! Take that Rachel Ray... (Sorry, been watching too much Food Network.) I'm getting hungry just thinking about it...