Paneer Tandoori

( Cottage Cheese marinated in curd and grilled )

I had this paneer preparation at a friend's place. And upon asking her the recipe, she said, just marinate the paneer cubes in curd, mixed with ginger-garlic & all masalas...grill it for 5 minutes and the Paneer is ready! It sounded simply simple....

So when I bought Paneer this week, thought of making this preparation. The Paneer cubes were diced and I was about to mix the 'masalas' into the curd, when something just didnt feel right! It was quite late (as I had presumed it'll be a fast to cook recipe, I had started just about 1/2 hr prior to dinner time...), so couldnt really call her up to enquire about the detailed recipe....

Well, kept the paneer back into the fridge, placed the curd in a cheese cloth (I use a big, clean piece of Dhoti as a Cheese Cloth ;) ) and hung it overnight.

[As you realise, the paneer had to be postponed to the next day and for that night's dinner had to fry some sausages !]

Next evening resumed the process and thereafter it was quite simple indeed!

Ingredients :
A. Basic
* Paneer - 300 gm
* Hung Curd - around 500 gm (made from Curd made out of 1.5 litres milk approx)
* Capsicum diced - 1 big or 1 & 1/2 small
* Tomatoes diced - 1 big
* Onions - Diced - 2
* Green Chilli - 3-4 slit longitudinally

B. Spices
* Ginger - 1 tbsp
* Garlic - 1 tbsp
* Haldi/Turmeric - 1 tsp
* Dhania / Coriander powder - 1 tsp
* Jeera / Cumin powder - 1 tsp
* Red Chilli pwder- 1 tsp
* Kashmiri Chilli pwder - 1 tsp
* Black pepper pwder - 1/2 tsp
* Kasuri Methi - 1 tsp (soaked in warm water)
* Sugar - to taste
* Salt - to taste

Procedure

1. Prepare the hung curd by folding curd in a cheese cloth or thin muslin cloth and hanging it for 4-5 hrs for the water / whey to drip out. I placed the cheese cloth with curd folded in it on my bigh plastic strainer and placed the strainer on a tall steel container.

2. Mix all ingredients at 'B' with the hung curd and beat the curd-masala mix well with a spoon.

3. Marinate the paneer cubes in the above prepared Curd-masala mix for 2 hrs minimum (I kept for exactly 2 hrs for lack of time)

4. If you have a Tandoor Oven or an OTG, use either of these, for best results. I used my Microwave Oven with Grilling mode, as my OTG is out of order and I dont have the other one. (I'm seriously planning to buy the Tandoor Oven)

5. Spray some oil in an ovenproof container. Place half the quantity of diced capsicum, onion and tomatoes and sprinkle some salt and chilli powder. With a spoon turn them around in the container to coat them with the oil. I microwaved these using the Microwave + Grill mode, for 3-4 minutes.

6. Pour the marinated Paneer into the container. Garnish with the remaining capsicum, onion and tomatoes. Spray some oil on top. Again microwave using the Microwave + Grill mode, for 7-8 minutes. Then, again on ONLY Grill mode, let it cook for another 4-5 minutes.




Serve HOT with Parathas or Naan. We had them with Phulkas.