paneer achari :)

This is a starter dish (then serve it with mint chutney) or as a side dish in main course. I tried it at bama's place yesterday and she gave me an idea of the recipe. Actually I just cooked it and I find it really heavy. But it is super yummy. And relatively simple. No fancy requirements. A good candidate to try on my folks in India as well when I am there with them.
Ingredients:
1) Sauf - fennel seeds (I promise this is the only out of the blue ingredient - rest are common stuff)
2) Your usual spices- jeera, mustard seeds, cloves, bay leaves etc
3) Ginger garlic paste
4) Yoghurt (as thick as possible - preferable drain the water - that's what bama told me but I am a lazy bum)
5) paneer
6) really really finely chopped onion (the finely chopped part is very important - also no paste of onions)

Steps:
1) Heat oil in pan, add the cloves, bay leaves, jeera, sauf (fennel seeds), mustard, red chillies (I forgot this time but i think this will add a good rustic touch).
2) Once done, add the finely chopped onions. I added 1 and half onion for 5/6th of the paneer (around 1 pound) that I get in mayuri.
3) I fried it till it turned pink. This took a while.
4) Add 1 spoon of ginger garlic paste (I put the one i buy from market, my mom hates the idea of not usign fresh stuff:( ), added garam masala, red chilli powder, dhania powder and haldi.
5) Once i thought things are cooked, I added 2-3 tablespoon of yoghurt. Enough yoghurt so that al ltthe paneer drowns in it.
6) Once the yoghurt seemed done (oil started seprating fro mthe corners), I added paneer cubes.

For the folks like Bama who work hard:
1) Marinate this mixture overnight. Or atleast for a few hours
2)Next day grill this in your oven.
This would be a starter with mint chutney

For folks like me that is catch (...) :
1) I had a flat bottomed non-stick tava pan (what are these things called officially?).
2) I heated up a little oil and in 2 batches ( I really had a lot of paneer) placed a layer of paneer on it.
3) Once one side was doen I turned it.
You can see the pics of it when placed in tava and once out of it on my serving bowl.
I personally feel (after eating) that marinating a little while it will give a good flavour to paneer.
Also my onions were from Indian store. I think that was a lucky co-incidence for my dish.

shrimps when you have nothing but shrimps

Ok- disclaimer - this is meant for kitchens in US coz I know even when the kitchen is empty - we have onion and frozen grated coconut in stock. And if you don't then you cook less frequently than once in 3 months. So those are my ingredients:
1) Onion
2) grated coconut
3) shrimp

Actually to begin with I only had 1 and 3. But then I remembered that coconut might blend in well and then I remembered taht G3 had fed this to me so I became more confidant.
So here is the recipe:
1) finely - really finely - chop onions. No shortcuts here
2) Heat oil, add cumin seeds, 1/2 cloves, green chillies (if you have them) etc
3) Add the onion and fry till they are golden brown - that stage comes after they turn pink :).
You can add your garam masala, haldi, mirchi, dhania powder at this stage
4) Add the shrimps
5) As an after thought I added good amount of coconut
6) Then I cooked it on and on til lthe shrimps were done
7) I garnished it with some fresh coriander leaves (I know i know - the title of this post is misleading ;) )

It tastes fairly good with the rotis.