Tawa Paneer....

Tawa paneer is a spicy and tangy sidedish made with paneer, onion, capsicum and tomato. It tastes great with rotis, naan and kulchas too. We have always had this at restaurants and my wish was to serve it at my kitchen table and give everybody a pleasant surprise. I make a lot of paneer gravies but I havent named them anything with the restaurant style name. They were all trials in my kitchen and recipe from friends that could not be tagged with a name. Decided to do a few more based on restaurant menus. Lets see how it goes

Last week when deciding on what paneer dish to make for dinner to serve with chapathis, my elder kiddo niks suggested we make tawa paneer. He wants spicy stuff these days. We checked a few youtube videos and well the procedure was very simple and we had all the ingredients at hand. Tried it for dinner few days back and turned out as we wanted it to be. It was so much liked by kids that they finished off more than half the sabji before daddy was home for dinner. Poor hubby he got to eat less curry than usual :)

Serves... 4 ppl

Serve option... Hot with roti, naan, chapathi or kulcha

This is what u'll need....

Paneer - 1 packet
Onion - 1 big
Tomatoes - 2 big
Capsicum - 1 small
Jeera / Cumin seeds - 1 tspn
Green chillies - 2 
Pav Bhaji masala - 1 tspn
Red Chilli powder - 1/2 tspn
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tspn
Ginger paste - 1 tspn
Garlic cloves - 3-4 thinly sliced
Butter/Oil - 2 tbspn
Sugar - 1 tspn
Salt to taste

Here is the stir....

• Gather all your ingredients and get ready to make tawa paneer

• Heat butter in a pan and let it start melting

• Add cumin seeds / jeera to the butter and let it start sizzling

• Chop onions finely and add it to the pan. Stir it around till it starts getting translucent 

• Spoon in ginger paste. Slice garlic cloves thinly and add it to the pan

• Let it cook on low flame till the raw smell of ginger fades away

• Add salt and sugar to the onion

• Slit green chillies and toss them into the pan

• Roughly chop the tomatoes and puree them finely

• Pour this puree into the pan and stir it. Cook this on low flame till oil starts separating

• Add chopped capsicum to the pan and give it a good mix. Let this cook for a few minutes 

• Spoon in pav bhaji masala, red chilli powder and turmeric powder to the gravy

• Add half a cup of water to the pan and let it simmer covered for some more minutes till half the water has evaporated

• Cut paneer into cubes and soak in warm water for 10 minutes

• Add paneer to the pan. Give one final stir so that the gravy is evenly coated on the paneer pieces. Turn off the flame

• Serve it hot with roti or naan or chapathis

 Note:

• Adjust spice level. Green chillies and red chilli powder is also used. Use in moderation
• Paneer need not be cooked for a long time. Just a few seconds and turn off the flame
• Soaking paneer in warm water makes it soft