Saturday, March 7, 2009

Palak Paneer for a Culinary Trip to India

Another bookmarked recipe was turned into a luscious meal for the Crispy family thanks to my Cook the Books buddy Deb at Kahakai Kitchen. She recently made a Palak Paneer, a spicy Indian spinach curry usually made with paneer cheese. In Deb's recipe, baked spiced tofu cubes substitute for the paneer.

I was anxious to try this recipe as I often order it when we dine out at Indian restaurants and will sometimes buy a package of "heat and eat" palak paneer at the grocery for a quick dinner or lunch. I made her dish in two steps, roasting the tofu cubes in the oven in the morning before work and then making the spinach curry when I got home from work. I paired it with some wonderfully fragrant basmati rice with a bunch of pointy curry leaves, which are two awesome purchases from my recent trip to India Bazaar. The philistines in my family picked out the curry leaves and complained that they looked like they dropped off a ficus plant, but I thought they added a great perfume to the dish and cheerfully chomped all mine down.



Thank you Deb for sharing another great recipe! I am sending a bowl of this fabulous Palak Paneer to Joan at Foodalogue for her Culinary Tour Around the World Event, where we are all now on a virtual visit to India. Joan's event is promoting awareness of world hunger issues and is linked to the BloggerAid group of folks hoping to raise funds for the UN World Food Programme. Joan will be publishing a roundup of Indian dishes on March 11th, so be sure to drop by to see what we all brought to our fragrant feast.

10 comments:

Amy said...

Mmmm Palak Paneer is one of my all time favourite dishes! I love the addition of curry leaves. I'll have to try that!

FOODalogue said...

Just love this dish! Hope you made enough for leftovers -- they were equally great! Thanks for participating.

Deb in Hawaii said...

Yea! So glad you liked it! I just bought some curry leaves for a soup I am making next week and also used them to garnish my carrot soup for tomorrow. I love the taste of them too! ;-)

giz said...

What a beautiful dish Rachel. Love it. Who needs meat when you have something this hearty.

Karen Brown Letarte said...

I love palak paneer... I love tofu-- so I bet this version rocks! Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

hey...can you post the recipe? This looks awesome

Rachel said...

I will definitely be making this again soon. It was so tasty and healthy and the basmati rice added a great perfume too. As for the recipe, you can find it on Deb's Kahakai Kitchen website by clicking on the link in my blog post above. I don't like to reprint other people's recipes on my blog but I love send them a little link love. Deb has lots of other great recipes from her Honolulu kitchen, so stop by and visit to get this awesome recipe.

Alicia Foodycat said...

I love the idea of using tofu! Palak paneer is so good, but the paneer can be hard to get hold of (and I am too lazy to make my own).

Maggie said...

I love palak paneer and really want to try this tofu version. It'll be a great way to use up some blocks of frozen spinach too!

Laddoo said...

This is making me hungry. You can check some more delicious Palak Paneer Recipes here.