The expeditions of a culinary novice(series)#2.

The culinary novice strikes again!

Well, cooking is definitely tiresome and the only motivation might be - you get to eat what you cooked !! Yaay.

Now imagine, trying to make something and it turning out to be a disaster, think about the tragic death of that motivation you got a few minutes ago, sad isn't? Well that's what happens when you are a novice, you just love to experiment, and sadly all experiments don't work out.

But then again, the Indian cuisine is so full of flavours that you can't resist trying to make them yourselves. Why order your favourite food, when you can make it? One such dish is Paneer (cottage cheese) Butter Masala.I adore that thing, adore is not the word, I might cry those happy tears each time I eat it.

The dish in itself is a delight. It just melts into your mouth, the kind of flavour burst is a different experience all together. It is more of an emotion, the cottage cheese (paneer) cubes half submerged in the creamy gravy, the smell of melted butter in cream, the ecstasy of the first bite.. Yumm!! I could write poetry on paneer.

Now that (hopefully) I've triggered those taste buds, I might as well share the recipe.

So the estimated cooking time will be some 40 to 60 minutes.

And what will you need ?

• Cottage cheese(paneer) cubes(250 gm).
• Cashew nuts (the more the merrier, but say 2 tea spoons).
• Tomatto and onion (say you take 2 onions make sure you have 3 to 4 tomatoes) .
• Green chilly (1 or 2).
• Butter (lots of it, but incase you just freaked out let's say 3 tea spoons) .
• Ginger garlic paste 1-2 teaspoons.
• A mix of Indian spices(chilly powder(1 tsp) +turmeric powder (1/2 tsp) +garam masala(1/2 tsp)) (with it 1 or 2 bayleaves, cardamom and clove)
• Sugar and salt (as required) and water

Lets get cooking ...Yaay.

• First grease a pan with butter and oil, into it add the bayleaves, cardamom and clove.
• Add the ginger garlic paste, wait for the raw smell to disappear.
• Into the pan add the onions and once they turn the slightest shade of brown add in the rest of the spices and with it some salt and sugar.
• Add the tomatoes to this and cook till you see the oil ooze out of the tomatoes.
• Now, after cooling this mixture, add the Cashew nuts and some water to make a smooth paste using a mixer.
• Again heat a pan greased with butter and to it add this paste cook it till it looses its raw smell and add your paneer cubes to it.
• After some time add some fresh cream to it.

You may have this with Indian breads like naan roti(chapathi) , it just compliments whatever is served with it.It is a north Indian dish,but is equally favoured and happily savoured in all parts of the country. This dish originated in the 1950s when Punjabis at Moti Mahal restaurant in Delhi invented the sauce by mixing fresh butter into a tomato-based curry.

There you are with the best of Indian dishes .You can thank me later.