Paneer - home made cheese

Paneer cheese can be used for instance
in palak paneer.

Paneer is a home made cheese used in Indian cuisine. This paneer recipe is for the previous palak paneer but paneer can also be marinated with spices in olive oil and so on.

This recipe make enough paneer for the palak paneer:

2 l whole milk
4 tbsp vinegar (clear)

Cook the milk in a casserole and add the vinegar. Carefully stir the milk and it should curdle the milk.

After the milk has been cooked, add
vinegar and stir the milk carefully
to curdle it.

Pour the curdled milk on a towel and let the whey drain through the towel.

Drain the whey through a towel so that
only cheese is left.

Have the cheese inside the towel and have a small weight on it. Place the cheese in a cold place.

After the cheese has cooled down
you should have this firm piece of
cheese.

Palak Paneer

Serve the creamy spinach stew with naan bread
and rice.

This is a third Indian dish I am trying and since my no meat experience continues I decided to try this dish. Palak Paneer is also my favorite when eating out in Indian restaurants. The dish is simply spinach in cream.

You will need for this dish

200 g spinach
Paneer cheese
1 dl or more cream
1 onion
5 cloves garlic
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cummin (jeera)
1 tsp garam masala

Cook the spinach for few minutes and mix it with a hand mixer in to a puré. For more spicy result you can here add some chili in to the spinach puré.

Cook the spinac until they turn dark green.

For more spicy result add some chili to the
paste.

Cut the onion and mince the garlic, and cook them until the onion is transparent. Add the turmeric and jeera and cook some more. Add the spinach, garam masala and salt. Let the mix to cook for 3 minutes on low fire.

Cook the onion and garlic until transparent.

Add jeera and trumeric and cook some more.

Add the cream and continue cooking on low fire for 4-5 minutes. In the end add the diced paneer cheese.

After you have added the spinach, cream and
garam masala you can finally add the
paneer cheese.

Serve with jasmine rice and naan bread.

My favorite!

Thai inspired salad

Serve the salad as such or with fish.

As my no meat dairy continues this Thai inspired salad is so delicious and the secret is in the dressing.

200-300 g kale (leaf cabbage)
3-4 carrots
1 red sweet pepper
1 bunt of chilantro
3 spring onions
cashew nuts

Dressing:
3 cloves of garlic, minced
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp of sugar or honey
1 tbsp sesame oil
juice of one lime

Slice all the vegetable either to regular slices or as thin juliennes. Mix the sliced vegetables with whole nuts. Prepare the dressing and pour it on the salad.

You can either have the salad as such or then serve with fish for instance.

Carrot steaks with ginger

The carrot steaks reall made my stomach
full.

I have been testing a meat-free diet for few weeks now. I still have some more weeks to go. I attend to start eating meat again soon but just wanted to try how would I feel and would I be creative when it comes to food. And yes, I have tried now so many different vegetarian dishes that it is amazing.

Here is the first one:

3 large carrots grated
1 dl corn flour
1 egg
a bit of grated fresh ginger
chili flakes
salt
pepper

Grate the carrots and mix them with corn flour, grated ginger, chili and salt and pepper. Add the egg and mix well. Make steaks with your hands and fry them on a frying pan on both sides until golden brown.

You can season the carrot steaks how you self wish and like.

Fry the steaks on both sides golden brown.

Chicken shawarma

The tower looks amazing but can fall
down in the oven.

This could be called kebab, shawarma etc. I found the recipe on Twisted's vidoes on Facebook. It was quite ok though I would have expected stronger flavours.

You need

1 kg chicken fillets
5 dl Greek yoghurt
1,5 tbsp brown sugar
3 cloves minced garlic
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp chili
1,5 tbsp cumin
1,5 tbsp oil
Juice of 3 limes

Slice the chicken filets half horisontally. Mix all the ingredients to yoghurt and place the sliced chicken fillets to the yoghurt and let it marinate over night.

I used a normal chop stick where I put the meat.

Preheat the oven to 200 ºC. Place the half of a red onion on a pan and put a stick in it (I used normal chop stick). Pile the chicken fillets on top of the onion continuing until all the chicken is piled. According to Twisted you should skewer them in cross shape in order to prevent the whole thing to fall. This did not help me since the onion gets soft and mine  Finally put a half a lemon on top.

Bake in the oven for an hour with peppers and
red onions.

Have some cut peppers and onion around the tower. Bake in the oven for one hour.

Serve as fajitas.

Good meat for fajitas.

Taste was good but could be stronger in
flavours and maybe juicier.

Grilled fruits with chocolate

Grill for 5 minutes. Try also with white
chocolate.

This recipe is actually called Gino but it should be with white chocolate. Accidently I bought dark chocolate so I am not sure whether I can call this gino but the taste was really good.

For 2-3 people you need

2 bananas
2 kiwis
1 orange
grapes
200 g chocolate

Pre-heat the oven with the grill function to 250 ºC. Slice the fruits and place on an oven pan. Put the crashed chocolate on the fruits and grill it for 5 minutes.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Naan bread

I have started to make more and more Indian dishes like in my previous posts you may find the butter chicken and dahl. This naan bread recipe is a perfect match to butter chicken or even dahl. The bread pieces taste so good when dipped in to the butter chicken sauce for instance.

The recipe makes 2 large naan breads:

1,5 dl warm milk (37 ºC)
2 tbsp sugar
25 g yeast
9 dl flour
0,5 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp oil
1,5 dl natural yoghurt
1 egg
a bit of clarified butter (ghee)

Mix the yeast with milk and sugar. Leave the milk for 15 minutes until bubbles appear.

Mix in another bowl flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the milk. Add also oil, yoghurt and egg. Mix it to smooth dough. Put a plastic foil on the dough and let it double its size during one hour.

Preheat the over more than 250 ºC. Put the oven sheet to the oven to be pre-heated.

Divide the dough to two or more balls and bake the balls to flat tear shaped breads.

Place the breads to pre-heated oven sheet and bake in oven for 3 mintues.

After you have taken the breads out from the oven brush them with ghee.

You may also add minced garlic or chilantro to the dough for vary the taste.