I. Food for thought
I love food. It is my favorite thing to talk about. It's one of my favorite things to bond with people over because it's something everyone (to my knowledge) needs to consume.
I enjoy going out to eat. What tends to happen over time is that I fall into a pattern of ordering the same things at the same few places, over and over again. I live in Seattle, which generally has pretty good places to go, but doesn't have a ton of variety and is expensive for what you get. Coming from a place like NYC and frequenting places like Singapore, Seattle can understandably feel second rate in terms of price and selection.
Cooking was something I did occasionally. I had a few recipes I would follow for meal prep or help my parents for holiday dinners. I'd do basic things and knew enough technique not to set my house on fire. Impressive, I know.
During the pandemic, my wife and I would order from this dim sum place that did an excellent seafood fried rice for $20. We'd spend close to $100 ordering a few dishes that would last us a couple of days. While it was tasty and we dealt with it because of COVID, there was a part of me that was incredibly frustrated knowing how simple this probably was to make.
So I learned how to make seafood fried rice in the style of the restaurant, and got close enough that I never needed to order it again. I probably spend less than 20% of the cost of ordering out making it, which is worth it being maybe a little healthier at the expense of some deliciousness.
Cooking has become my favorite creative discipline. I need to eat anyway, eating moderately healthy is good for me, and it's cheaper than dining out. What's been most satisfying about cooking is moving from a space where I can execute recipes to understanding how ingredients work and making my own using intuition.
This has felt like a huge unlock for me, like knowing the circle of fifths or which scales pair well with specific chords.
II. Enter Palak Paneer
Palak Paneer is one of my favorite dishes. For those unfamiliar, it's essentially pureed spinach with butter and spices, mixed with cubes of cottage cheese. It's a pretty standard offering at a lot of Indian restaurants.
Every time I would go for Indian food, I always made sure to order it. However, eventually I got tired of spending money on it and decided to learn it myself.
I knew next to nothing about cooking Indian food. From my time learning other country's cuisines, I know that there's generally a standard set of ingredients that make up the majority of dishes that people are familiar with, plus or minus a few guest stars that make things unique. For example, you can make a ton of Chinese food with soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, chicken bouillon powder, and shaoxing wine. It doesn't require too many ingredients to do a lot of things, much like how you don't really need too many different guitar pedals to get unique sounds.
So I got to researching. I spent hours watching youtube videos, reading recipes, and seeing different ways people prepare this dish. India is a huge country with lots of regional variation, and this is the kind of dish that varies across regional axes, but also where it is being served: is this a casual homemade meal or being served at a proper restaurant? Variance in what was acceptable and called "palak paneer" was among some of the most diverse I'd seen in food with a uniform name. Especially one that roughly translates to "spinach cheese".
After ingesting all of this data like I'm some sort of fleshy LLM, I get to spitting out a recommendation for how to put this together my way. I didn't feel 100% about any one recipe I was shown and wanted to put my own spin on it.
III. The Recipe
Like any good food blog, you need to scroll this far to see the recipe. Congrats on finding it.
I've been making this obsessively for a few months now and I feel exceptional after eating it. I completely understand why they made Popeye's muscles grow big when he ate a whole can of spinach. The stuff is magic. Palak Paneer makes consuming huge quantities of this easy.
Ingredients (sorry to the non-Americans here):
2 lbs of spinach (usually two large bags)
1 tbsp of ghee (clarified butter. You can supposedly swap for oil or regular butter, but this is most legit)
2 tbsp of cumin seeds (I eyeball this, more is okay.)
5 to 9 dry red peppers (Can probably do less if you don't want as much heat, but I am a fiend for spice)
Half a red onion, diced
6 cloves of garlic, diced
1 roma tomato, diced (could be half of a bigger tomato, but the Trader Joe's near me has these and it works well)
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala
1 brick of paneer, diced
I recommend starting by prepping all of the ingredients so assembly is easy. Once you have all the ingredients ready and cut, let's get right into it.
Start by blanching the spinach in a pot of boiling water. Let it cook for like 2-3 minutes. Take it out and put it into cold water to stop cooking. I usually have a mixing bowl I fill with ice cubes and cold water. Strain. Squeeze out excess water. It's okay if you're a little rough with the leaves, since they're going to get blended anyway. Get the leaves dry enough, then take a stick blender (or immersion blender) and puree the leaves. I keep this kind of course where you can still sense this was once a leaf, but still pretty consistent in texture overall.
As a side note, you could use a food processor, but I live in a small apartment and find this more accessible. Stick blenders feel like a pretentious foodie item, but you can get a decent one for not that much. I like it for things that best blended while cooking, like pasta sauce.
Next, get a small pot (I have a cheap 2qt pot I bought a long time ago I should probably replace). Put on medium-ish heat, maybe more or less pending your settings. Use your judgment. Melt the ghee until it coats the bottom of the pan. Add cumin and red peppers. Toast for a few minutes.
Add red onions, the garam masala, and the turmeric. Mix well and cook until the onion starts to get translucent. Then add the garlic and roast for a few minutes. Then add the tomato and cook it down a bit 'til it gets slightly mushy.
Now comes the big moment. Add the spinach and apply the trusty stick blender once more. Mix until everything is combined. The dry peppers probably could come out at this stage, or you can just avoid them since they tend not to play nicely here.
You should now have a pretty consistent green puree. Let it get up to a boil and bubble for a bit. Turn heat to low and add in your paneer. I usually just toss the paneer as is, but some recommend frying ahead of time in seasoning. I subbed paneer for chickpeas recently when I didn't have any paneer on hand, and I think I may actually prefer this as a healthier and more economic option.
I like serving it over rice, with garlic naan, or paratha.
A big part of getting it right is the ratio of spinach to ghee. If this isn't to your liking, I recommend starting by adjusting how much ghee you add to make it creamier. This was where I did the most experimentation and felt it made the biggest difference.
My tolerance for dairy has cratered over the years, and so I prefer a more spinach-forward tasting dish. Some add milk or cream at the end, but this feels like a bridge too far for my delicate stomach. But I do bet it's tasty.
III. Parting Words
I did have the opportunity to prepare this recently for an Indian friend who commented that among the palak paneer she's had, that this was "spinach-forward" and "tasted healthy".
It was not what she was expecting (she was expecting the creamier variety more in line with restaurants) -- so there's my warning to you. Don't go looking for me in the Michelin Guide.
Let me know if there's anything else you think I should learn how to make: coniferblog@proton.me