Mike van de Elzen: Palak paneer curry

Palak paneer curry 

Cook time: 10 minutes 

Prep time: 10 minutes 

Serves: 6 

1kg spinach paste  

500gm paneer  

1 onion diced finely  

2 tbsp sunflower oil  

4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed  

1 tsp finely grated ginger  

2 finely diced tomatoes (or ½ can chopped tomatoes)  

1 tbsp cumin seeds  

½ cup cream or coconut cream for dairy free  

1 ½ tsp garam masala 

 ¼ tsp turmeric  

Chilli to taste  

Salt to taste 

Start by making the fresh spinach paste.  

Remove the large stalks from the spinach and drop into a large pot of boiling salted water. Leave for 30 seconds before removing and placing into iced water to stop cooling.  

Place the spinach into a food processor and blend with a pinch of salt until it turns into a paste. Add a touch of hot blanching water if required.  

Now make up the Palak Paneer:

Heat oil and add cumin seeds, fry till it sizzles and pops. Add chopped garlic and let it fry till raw smell goes and it is light brown. Add onions and fry till light brown, then add ginger and fry till raw smell goes. Add tomatoes and cook it till oil separates. Add salt, chili, turmeric, add spinach paste and cook for 2 mins. Then add cream and paneer and cook for 5 mins. Add garam masala.  

Serve with a naan and rice. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Time for a resident chef. Now Mike Vandals and good morning,
Good morning, how are you.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm all right, it's good to somewhere. I'm about to
go somewhere very cold, so I'm at the airport waiting
to fly. Well, just going down to Queenstown. But apparently
it's minus two.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
All right, the spinach will be wilting down there.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'll get to need lots of spinach keeping strong.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Look, I do like spinach, and it's so good for us,
but I like the idea of giving us it's something
something new to you just throw it into because I
do find it's much more tasty when it's been it's
contributing to a dish rather than you eating it as
a salad.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Yeah, and this is a fantastic dish. Like once a
month we host a master class at the school and
Ash comes to some of them and host them and
Ashes the owner of Tendori Restaurant, on who'llpie and she's amazing,
obviously amazing, and Jim cooking one of the dishes actually
does polack panaire, which is basically translates into spinach and penia,

(01:12):
so it's spinach and cheese curry. Some of us probably
know it as sag panier, which is the same it's
the same dish, but it's just outside India they call
it sag. God knows why. So anyway, let's start by
making up. We need a kilo spinach paste. So to
get this spinach paste, we go out and we probably
purchase about a kilo and maybe a little bit more

(01:32):
fresh spinach. Take off the large stalks, bring a big
pot of boiling salted water to the boil. Drop in
your spinach leaves, leave them in there for about thirty seconds,
pull them out into ice water that just stops them
from cooking, brings out the color, and then fire them
into a food processor and just blend them until they
turn into a paste. You might want to just reserve
a little bit of that blanching that hot blanching water

(01:52):
and just add that into help turn that spinach into
a paste. Once that's turned into a paste, to set
that aside, and then into a large cast iron pan
you want to start to heat up a little bit more.
So I've got two tablespoons of someplower oil into the
It goes a tablespoon of whole komon seeds, cook them
until they start to sizzle and pop, and then add

(02:13):
in forecloses of garlic that have been peeled and chopped.
Add that in, saute that for another couple of minutes,
and then one onion that's been peeled and fine your diced,
saute that, and then you go in with the fresh ginger.
Really important. I've got a teaspoon of freshly grated ginger.
Feel free to go harder on that if you want.
Sautee the ginger. And then in some tomatoes. So I've
got half a can, I hope your tomatoes. If you've

(02:34):
still got some fresh tomatoes floating around, you can add
in two large fresh tomatoes, add a little bit of salt,
add a little bit of chili if you wish, half
teaspoon of tumeric powder, and then in goes the all
important spinach paste. Cook that for a couple of minutes
until it's basically starting to heat through. You don't want
to cook the bugger out of it, otherwise you're spinch
gonna turn army green, So just cook that to keep

(02:56):
it nice and fresh. And then goes a half a
tin of either either half a cup sorry of coconut
cream if you want it vegetarian lotion, or you go
half a cup of fresh cream up to you add
that in and then ride at the end. I've got
one and a half chesspoons of going myself. Add that
and mix that through until that cheese is just heatd through.

(03:16):
Don't heat it too far, o, those cheese can start
breaking down, and that's it. Is the most amazing flavorsome,
simple vegetarian cheese curry you could ever make.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Thank you so much, Mike, have a great time in Queenstown.
Of course you can get that recipe at good from
scratch dot co dot inzed or head to news talksb
dot co dot inz of Ford slash Sunday. Someone texts
to say, who was the name of that New Zealand
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A lot of you really enjoyed hearing from her. What

(03:47):
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Someone suggesting I should google heel toe rodeo line dance
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(04:09):
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Speaker 1 (04:12):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
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