My favorite dish :) esp paneer flavor.. and I so miss it here. Well there is a food chain which has paneer pizza available here but then I really didn't like the flavor. So i had been meaning to prepare this since ages and finally made it yesterday. It turned out quite nice. I also did little r&d and found out how to do wheat base rather than all maida base - little healthier version :)


Ingredients
4 Cup Wheat Flour
2 Cup Maida
400g Paneer
2.5 Cup Mozarella Cheese
1 Cup Parmesan Cheese
1.5 Cup Milk
5 Spoon Curd
2.25 Spoon Active Dry Yeast
1/2 Onion
1/4 Cup Dried Tomatoes
4 Sweet Bell peppers
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
2 Spoon Butter
1/2 Spoon Sugar
2 Spoon Red Chilli Powder
1/2 Spoon Jeera Powder
1/2 Spoon Corriander Powder
1/4 Spoon Garam Masala
2 Spoon Tandoori Masala
1/2 Spoon Garlic Paste
1/2 Spoon Ginger Paste
1 Spoon Basil Leaves
Salt to taste

Method

• Warm a cup of water, add sugar and active dry yeast. Still well, wrap up with the clinging film and keep aside for 10 minutes to let yeast activate
• In a plate mix wheat flour, maida, olive oil, melted butter, activated yeast and salt to taste
• Add milk and knead the soft dough. Keep it in a large bowl covered with clinging film for around 2 hours to double in size.
• In a bowl, mix curd, garlic paste, ginger paste, jeera powder, corriander powder, garam masala, tandoori masala and salt to taste.
• Marrinate the cubed paneer with this curd mixture and refrigerate it till the time pizza dough is doubling up
• When the dough is doubled up, divide it into two portions and spread it on pizza pans
• Spread parmesan cheese, grated mozarella cheese on top of the pizza base
• Spread the cubed paneer pieces, bell pepper slices, onion slices and dried tomato evenly on top of it
• Sprinkle basil leaves
• Preheat oven to 400F/200C
• Bake the pizza at 400F/200C for 25 minutes

Notes
While activating yeast, the water should be luke warm - just warm to touch otherwise if too hot the yeast would burn up. To know if yeast is activated you need to see if foam is present in the yeast-water-sugar mixture.
When I baked pizza i found that one of the pizza was really risen well and other one was also rised but not as much as the other one. So I binged ;-) a bit and found that the while baking pizza we should be baking only on upper shelve the middle shelf doesnt have enough heat and hence the pizza doesnt rise well in that section. Well tip for me for next time.

Well, I know its been long since I posted here but I was on a little break from cooking for few weeks. I was busy with work and tired to cook everyday. When I was in India, I use to get this rest when I use to go to pune almost everymonth. Both my mom and mother in law were sweet enough to feed me without doing anything at all :) God.. I miss those days.. Now I had to take this break and rely on MacD/Subway/TacoBell/Husband's cooking once in a while. But now I feel fresh and motivated for cooking again and foremost bored with all the above items.. So here is the new dish that I tried. The recipe is something that I just thought of giving shot and kept on adding ingredients as I felt like. But I am stunned at the outcome. So easy, nutritious and yet good looking dish.


Ingredients
9 Cup Almost cooked Rice
2 Tomatoes
Handful of Corriander Leaves
3 Handsful of Spinach
1 Green Chilli
1 Spoon Corriander Powder
1 Spoon Red Chilli Powder
1/4 Spoom Garam Masala
Roasted Cashews for garnishing
Ghee
Salt to taste

Method

• Add salt in the rice, divide into three parts and keep aside.
• In a mixie grind tomatoes to form the puree. Keep aside
• Grind spinach, corriander leaves and green chilli adding minimal water in it. Keep aside
• Boil the Spinach-corriander leaves puree and let it cook till almost dry and thick enough
• Add corriander powder and 1 part of the rice in it and let it cook and dry completely.
• Add couple of spoons of ghee and mix and cook for another minute. Keep aside.
• Boil tomato puree
• When the puree starts to thicken, add red chilli powder, garam masala and 1 part of the rice.
• When the rice is done and dry sprinkle couple of spoon of ghee and keep aside
• Arranage the rice parts in the rice dish and garnish with the cashews

Notes
When grinding spinach i added little water and only 1/3 of spinach at first. When it was pureed I added another part of spinach and pureed it. That saved me with using extra water and while cooking the spinach wasnt over cooked and didnt have to wait too long for it to thicken.
I boiled rice and when it was almost done, just removed the excess water and ran through cold tap water so that each grain separates out from each other.

I had been so bored eating same type of gravies and all I thought that I have to try something different with paneer this time. Would have loved to make palak paneer but then I didnt have spinach and i was too tired with cycling and too engrossed in DMG - Abhi - Nikki Scenes that I decided to make my own tawa paneer recipe. Well I didnt even look on net for recipes nor did i check in some of the books I have. Just went through adding whatever I felt like. Result was awesome :) So here I am sharing with you my own Tawa Paneer


Ingredients
200g Paneer Block
1 Onion
2 Tomato
4-5 Sweet Peppers
1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder
1 Spoon Red Chilli Powder
1/4 Spoon Jeera Powder
1/4 Spoon Corriander Powder
1/4 Spoon Aamchur Powder
Salt to taste
Oil

Method

• Cut the paneer into squared pieces, onions and tomatoes into the medium sized pieces
• Slice the sweet peppers
• On a tawa add some oil and shallow fry paneer pieces on high heat but till light brown in colour. Keep aside
• In same oil add chopped onion and cook till light brown in colour. Separate from oil and keep aside
• Cook sweet peppers in same oil and keep aside
• In same oil, add tomato pieces and cook till almost done.
• Add red chilli powder, turmeric powder, jeera powder, corriander powder and Aamchur Powder and saute for 2-3 minutes
• Add paneer pieces, onion, sweet peppers and salt to taste.
• Mix well and cook for another 4-5 minutes and serve warm

Notes
I didnt want to add any fancy items in there nor i wanted to add more spices etc to make sure it is not too spicy. Well I loved the taste as it was it had perfect combination of mild spices with the soft paneer.
I used nonstick tawa with sides to it - that helped me in managing it while mixing well :)

These days I end up making parathas too often. Simple reason being, then you dont need to cook other 3-4 items and also ajoy loves parathas. So its good for me too and for him too.. especially on busy weekdays. So here is something I came up with Brinjal. I had tried this lot of times but I think yesterday was the best one with perfect combinations :) Hence its finally making its way out here :)


Ingredients
1 Medium Sized Brinjal
2 Cup Wheat Flour
1 Spoon Red Chilli Powder
1/4 Spoon Turmeric Powder
1/4 Spoon Jeera Powder
1/4 Spoon Corriander Powder
2-3 Spoon Corriander Leaves
Salt to taste
Oil

Method

• Broil the brinjal in the oven at 500F for 25minutes. Let it cool down
• Remove the cover and smash the brinjal.
• Add red chilli powder, turmeric powder, jeera powder, corriander powder, finely chopped corriander leaves and salt to taste.
• Add wheat flour and make the dough out of it.
• Apply a spoon of oil and knead well and keep aside for 20-30 minutes.
• Make lemon sized balls and roll the 3 fold parathas and cook them on the tawa.
• Serve hot with curd and pickle

Notes
You can roast the brinjal the way we do it for Bharata on the stove. Or you can bake them in the oven but I found that broiling functionality in ovens here is much better than baking when you need the item to be cooked without it oozing out its juices. The last few times I baked the brinjal it oozed lot of juice and then I had to add too much of wheat flour and the parathas lacked the brinjal taste in them.