Palak Paneer (Fried Cheese Cubes with a Spinach Sauce)

Recipe for "Restaurant-Style Fried Cheese Cubes with a Spinach Sauce (Palak Paneer)" from "660 Curries" by Raghavan Iyer

Modifications that I made are that I removed the stems from my spinach, and lightly chopped it since my fresh spinach leaves were large (The raw spinach only needs to be lightly chopped if it is bigger then baby spinach and you are adding it directly to the sauce. If you are blanching, then you can chop it after blanching). I also used a mixture of 1/4 cup whole milk yogurt and 1/4 cup whipping cream, instead of the 1/2 cup yogurt, since I was worried about curdling, and Iyer suggested that mixing the yogurt with whipping cream would help to prevent curdling.

The spices in this dish were nice, but I prefer adding some garam marsala at the end, to add a bit more complexity to the sauce.

This came out more watery than I would like. There are two ways in which you can fix this.

• First, if you want to wilt the spinach directly in the sauce as the instructions suggest, then don't be afraid to lightly boil the sauce a few extra minutes to reduce the excess water before you put in the yogurt and cream. The spinach does not need to be just barely cooked as you would if you were making something like Chinese spinach flash cooked with garlic. Indian greens tend to be cooked all the way through, until they are soft and melting. In fact the spinach is better in this dish if it has cooked for a few minutes.
• Second, even though the recipe suggests wilting the spinach in the sauce, you can blanching, squeezing, and chop the spinach before adding it to the sauce. This method might be easier if your greens are freshly washed and still have lots of water clinging to it. This will reduce the amount of liquid in the dish, and so that the final dish will be creamy-er.

Made with homemade paneer from 1 gallon of whole milk.

A final note is that even though in western cooking we tend to think of spinach as something that should be flash cooked, just to when it starts to wilt and served immediately, this dish tastes just as good or better on the second day, because Indian dishes are ment for the vegetables to be cooked through. So you don't need to worry about making this just before you eat it; it can be made the day before. When you reheat, be sure to gently reheat it and only to bring it up to a light simmer because of the dairy in the dish though (or you could consider adding the dairy just before you serve it). Also, on the second day, you may want to freshen it with some additional garam marsala (garam marsala has only toasted spices so it can be used as a finish spice that doesn't require additional coking), and maybe dollup of fresh cream and/or yogurt.