Delicious But So-Not-Authentic Vegetable Paneer

So, there is a restaurant that delivers to our home extraordinarily delicious Indian food.  Every time I order, I think about trying something new from their menu, and always fail, because the thing I usually order is so gosh-darned tasty.  I also usually have a plan to save half for my lunch the next day, and that plan is also a HUGE fail, since I inevitably eat all of it.  My only other problem is trying to keep my child's hands off my paneer, since she always tries to steal all of it!

I've been thinking about finding some some Indian recipes to try at home, and when I was out with a coworker at lunch today, and the store we were in had blocks of paneer for a good price (our local grocery store never has paneer, which is sad), I decided that tonight would be the night I would try my hand at an Indian inspired dish.  This turned out pretty good, but since I threw it together without a recipe, based on what was in the fridge and pantry, it is very definitely not anywhere close to authentic tasting.
Partner told me it was really good when going back for seconds and thirds, so I'm taking that as a good sign.

I should have taken this photo before I mixed everything together, but you get the idea

Here is how I cooked my Inspired by Indian Restaurant Vegetable Paneer

oil for frying
1 onion (I had a large shallot, so I used that), sliced
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 large carrot, cut into chunks
1 small zucchini, sliced
1 stalk celery, chopped
2-4 mushrooms, sliced
1 frozen spinach block (from the kind that come frozen in a bag, in large blobs, not a bag where the whole bag is one block)
frozen corn
frozen green beans
1 tin coconut milk
1 tin diced or crushed tomatoes
paneer, cut into cubes
1 tsp curry powder (or to taste)
1 tsp cumin (or to taste)
1 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)
1 tsp ground ginger (if you have fresh ginger on hand, use that instead!)
1 tsp chili powder
something spicy, if you like spicy (we added ours after, because the small child would have objected to hot sauce in her dinner)

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium, and add the onion.  When the onion starts to soften, add the garlic.  Let them cook until both are softened, and then add your carrot, celery, mushrooms and zucchini.
Give everything another minute or two, and add your spices to taste.  Remember that you can always add more later.
After the spices have had a moment to warm, put in the coconut milk and tinned tomatoes and give everything a stir.  Put in your frozen vegetables, and give another stir.
Let everything cook together for 1-3 minutes, and then add your paneer.  Make sure everything is well mixed into the sauce, and then turn up the heat to bring to a simmer (you want the sauce to reduce a bit)

When everything is cooked through, serve it with some rice, naan or other grain product like quinoa or couscous.  Essentially, something to soak up the sauce.
I think that next time I may try cooking this in the slow cooker (adding the paneer at the end, so it doesn't disintegrate), so that the flavours have even more time to get to know each other.

Vegetarian Slow Cooker Cabbage Rolls

I was flipping through one of my cookbooks earlier this weekend, and came across a recipe for vegetarian cabbage rolls.  The basic components sounded right, based on the innumerable cabbage rolls I ate as a child, so I decided to give it a shot, with some modifications.

The original recipe in my book calls for black beans, and raisins.  Frankly, I believe raisins are an abomination, especially when baked into other foods, so that was not happening.  I also think the black beans are too large a bean, if you are going to get anything close to a good texture.  I don't want big balls of mush when I bit into something like a cabbage roll.

Alright, here's how I did it.

1 cup cooked rice
1 tin (19 fl oz) lentils, drained & rinsed
1/3 cup diced carrot (about 1 small to medium carrot)
1/3 cup diced celery (about 1 large celery stalk)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
1 small to medium cabbage (I used a savoy, because they were on sale at the grocery store, but plain old green would work fine too)
3-4 cups marinara sauce (I used one 680ml jar of tomato passata, and just added spices, and a bit of water, but I definitely needed more sauce).
1 tbsp lemon juice or balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp sugar (brown for preference, but white will work too, it just won't be quite the same flavour)

1.  Mix the rice, carrots, celery, garlic, onion, lentils and one 1/2 cup of marinara sauce in a large bowl.  Set aside.
2.  Carefully peel off 8-10 of the large, outer cabbage leaves.  You want them to be as intact as possible.  Grate 2-4 cups of the rest of the cabbage.  Put the grated cabbage in the bottom of the crock pot (this will shield the rolls from the direct heat).
3.  Boil the intact leaves in a large pot of water for 3-5 minutes, or until pliable.  Drain the leaves, and cut out the thick middle rib.
4.  Mix the sugar & lemon juice with the marinara sauce.  Pour 1/3 of the marinara into the crock pot, and mix into the shredded cabbage (this will keep the grated cabbage from burning).
5.  Taking your whole leaves, one at a time, place approximately 1/3 cup of the rice and lentil mixture into the middle of the leaf, fold over the sides, and roll up.  Place each roll into the crock pot.
6.  Pour the remaining marinara sauce over the cabbage rolls (if you have to do more than 1 layer of rolls in the crock pot, pour some marinara over the first layer before putting in the second, and then pour the remaining sauce over the top).
7.  Cook on low for 7-9 hours, or on high for 3 1/2-4 1/2 hours.

I served mine with a salad tossed in a lemon-tahini salad dressing.  Yum!

Potato Cup Things With Eggs & Veg

Earlier today, this recipe quite literally landed on my doorstep, as part of today's newspaper.  They call the recipe Potato Nest Frittatas, but to me a frittata is more of an egg pie/cake sort of thing.  This is more like eggs in a nest.

So, I gave the recipe a bit of a spin for supper, except that I substituted a bit (and by a bit, I mean a lot).  I only made 5 egg-potato cups, just for reference.

I didn't have any russet potatoes, and the recipe calls for baking them in the oven and then letting them chill overnight.  I think this animated gif sums up my feelings this instruction:

I instead scrubbed two medium yellow potatoes (and one sweet potato, just to see how it would fare in the recipe) and microwaved them until they were cooked.  Then I stuck them in the freezer for 5 minutes, until they were cool enough to handle.  I probably should have left them in the freezer longer, as I discovered a few rogue pockets of steam while grating them.

The sweet potato was not as firm as the regular potatoes, so it was more half grated-half mashed, but they still made nice potato cups (I got 2 sweet potato cups and 3 yellow potato in total).

I put finely minced red onion, mushrooms, yellow sweet pepper and cream cheese in the potato cup, before cracking the egg in.  They only just fit in my standard size muffin tin.

Getting them out once they were done baking was a bit of an adventure.  I definitely did not grease the sides of the muffin tin cups enough, and the bottoms were still a little soft.  So, definitely check that your muffin tin is very well greased.

In the end though, they turned out to be delicious.  They went really well with buns and spinach salad for dinner.  Even munchkin gobbled her share right up.