Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Paneer Bhapa - Steamed Paneer




Sorry Friends. Lately I have got little busy with my freelancing projects and hence my posts are not as frequent as were earlier, but thanks for your patience. Today I am going to post one of my favorite paneer preparations. It is my favorite not because it is very tasty, but because it is very hassle free.
 


























Paneer Bhapa is a dry paneer curry cooked through steaming. If you have a steamer at home, you may use that to get this dish right or else you may follow the traditional technique of steaming, put all the ingredients together in a tiffin box tightly closed with a lid and then place the tiffin box inside a pressure cooker and pour 1/2 glass of water around the tiffin box to bring about steam. Now snap the lid of the pressure cooker in place and cook until 1 whistle. Don't open the lid immediately, let the pressure come down to room temperature and then open the lid. This paneer curry tastes best with rice, mainly because I have used mustard oil. I have seen my mother pouring raw mustard oil into the dish as final touch. The raw smell of mustard oil adds a pungent flavor to the dish which we Bengalis like. But you may cook the dish using white oil if you want to enjoy it with roti and as final touch, you may add ghee.

 Ingredients:                                                      Cooking time: 15 minutes

ü  300 gm paneer (cut into cubes)

ü  2 tbsp poppy seeds

ü  5 tbsp mustard seeds

ü  1 tsp turmeric powder

ü  1 tbsp sugar or adjust the amount as per your craving

ü  5-6 green chillies

ü  Salt to taste

ü  Mustard oil

Method:

1) Soak poppy seeds in water for an hour. Then grind it into paste. Add few tbsp of water into the poppy seeds and grind it into paste. Add green chillies and grind again.

2) Now in a mixing bowl, mix paneer together with the poppy-mustard-green chilli paste. Add turmeric powder, salt, sugar and generous amount of mustard oil. Mix well.

3) Put the paneer mixture in a tiffin box. Snap the lid in place tightly.

4) Put the tiffin box inside a pressure cooker and add 1 glass of water. The water around the tiffin box would help build steam.

5) Close the pressure cooker tightly with the lid and cook until 1 whistle on medium high heat.

6) Serve hot with rice.

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