Tonight we decided to try a new recipe for Saag Paneer with homemade Indian cheese. I realized I hadn’t posted any of the dishes we’ve been trying since one of the pineapple upside down cakes I baked earlier this month, so I made a point to stop and go get a camera. Unfortunately, we had already begun cooking by this point, which means I didn’t actually get the first part – making the homemade cheese. (It’s not difficult so you didn’t miss much; I haven’t checked but I imagine there are tons of videos on YouTube about how to do it.) Anyway, I think the last dish I posted in this family of cuisine was Chicken Tikka Masala a few months ago.
[mainbodyad]The Saag Paneer has a lot in common with the French peasant dish, leek and potato soup; at least in spirit. I haven’t run the exact numbers, yet, but a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows the entire thing can be made for less than $10 to $15 and feed a fairly large family (in our case, the expense was even less since we actually have a negative cost of milk). If one were to live on a farm or have a small garden, it could be cheaper still, almost to the point of being ridiculous. In dire straights, you could cut the cheese content and probably get the serving cost down to $1 to $2 per person. These dishes could be an absolute miracle for someone facing the prospect of extended unemployment or who wanted to get out of debt by saving every penny possible to send into the bank as principal.
I love studying this particular niche of food, peasant dishes, because it gives you a sense of how actual people, ordinary, normal folks through time, have lived in various cultures. Good peasant dishes took decades, if not centuries, to perfect, with regional variations on a common theme resulting in radically different experience. They weren’t cooked up in the palaces of old; they were individual families trying to scratch out the best living they could under conditions that we cannot even imagine. This doesn’t mean I am going to give up toying around with gourmet macaroni and cheese recipes or hosting Thanksgiving feasts anytime soon, but as someone who grew up poor, there is something to be said for good, cheap food like cornbread. It’s always going to have a spot in my culinary heart.
I enjoyed the Saag Paneer, though as far as peasant dishes go, I still have yet to find anything that beats the cream and chicken soubise (this shouldn’t come as a surprise (sauteed onions, butter, heavy cream, and cheese make up the bulk of the ingredient list) or the penne covered in tomato sauce with butter and onion. Still, Saag Paneer is a nice addition to your repertoire if you want actual food, with no artificial ingredients, made entirely from scratch in a very inexpensive way.
With the homemade cheese done, it was time to break into the spice cabinet.
The ingredients included a homemade cheese (the white block you see on the plate – we had to make it by applying heat to whole milk then removing the solids from the liquid with cheesecloth), butter, cinnamon, coriander, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, water, cilantro, onion, jalapeno chile, spinach, tomato, mustard greens, spinach, fresh ginger, etc.
Slicing the homemade cheese to get it ready for later when it has to be added to the sauce …
The cheese had a very, very mild flavor. It was incredibly subtle. It took more than a gallon of milk to make.
The butter that will be used to get the sauce going needed to be cut into smaller pieces …
Heating the butter …
Adding the spices to the butter for the Saag Paneer sauce base filled the entire kitchen with the scent of cinnamon. There wasn’t a lot in the recipe, but it definitely had a pleasant noticeable presence.
The other ingredients were slowly added to the base of the Saag Paneer once the butter and spices were ready …
The final part of the base was done, so now we needed to turn the puree …
The puree had a foundation of greens, that had been set aside in the blender …
Half of the spice, cinnamon, onion, tomato, et cetera base needed to be used to create a puree with the reserved greens.
Cashews and some other items were added …
The color was beautiful … it was this vibrant green that looked like life and summer. It also smelled delicious …
Time to reassemble the Saag Paneer in the pan with the other half of the ingredients over low heat.
Stir in the buttermilk and add a few of the final greens for texture …
The homemade cheese was added into the nearly finished mix to be slightly melted, add subtle flavor, and a bit of a creamy texture …
The Saag Paneer was plated over a bed of rice before we went into the other room. It was good; it tasted very, very fresh, with a lot of ambient spices that filled your mouth. It had the same spirit as the French leek and potato soup peasant dish we made awhile ago, only with a very noticeable spice difference …
The color may seem unappealing if you haven’t eaten a lot of Indian dishes – the introduction of the buttermilk and cheese, as well as adding back the other half of the spice, butter, and tomato base, changed the hue of the finished Saag Paneer to a yellowish green, rather than the bright, vibrant green the puree had – but it tasted fresh and light. It is a quintessential vegetarian dish.
I need to go back to work now. I would like to take the evening off but there are some things that really should be done before the end of the month and I’d be happier having them off my desk.
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Reader Comments (11)
Comments are presented chronologically, with replies indented beneath the comments to which they respond.
Angie
July 31, 2013
Are you a ethical vegetarian? If not, why ?
Angie_Hello!
July 31, 2013
Replying to Angie
Are you a wierdo vagan? If so, why?
joe pierson
July 31, 2013
Replying to Angie
Farm animals deserve to live as much as anyone else. If everyone is a vegetarian they would be denied life (unless you assumed the millions of cows and chickens and their offspring would be adopted as pets).
Gilvus
July 31, 2013
Aaron's got some incredible forearms...
Felipe
July 31, 2013
Hei Joshua, could you recommend a couple of websites where I can find the recipes for the dishes you post on your blog?
Joshua Kennon
October 5, 2013
Replying to Felipe
I'm so sorry I didn't see this and respond to it sooner! I hope you are signed up for Disqus so you get notified I responded.
The food I post on the blog comes from many different places.
Some of the recipes we invent ourselves, such as the now famous cinnamon roll recipe. Though I tend to be very protective of those. Last year, I became obsessed with making the perfect version of a new form of chicken soup that felt like Thanksgiving in a bowl. I can't even remember how many prototypes I went through, or how much it all cost, but the end product is something that resulted in me having to regularly make it for all of my family and friends. It requires something like 12 or 13 spices and herbs, chunks of chicken, a greatly reduced and concentrated broth, etc. I tend not to post those in case I ever decide to write a cookbook.
The best general purpose recipe site I have ever found - actually, Aaron found - is America's Test Kitchen. They will make a recipe 20, 50, or 100 times, varying the conditions under which it is made and then publish the entire process of the "best" one as judged by the taste testers. When we hosted Thanksgiving last year, we used several of their recipes, including the preparation techniques for the turkey and they were all home runs. I cannot praise them highly enough. I think they charge something like $4.95 per month, but just pay it. It's a tremendous bargain. You can even print the pre-made instructions and shopping lists. I absolutely, unequivocally, without reservation praise virtually all of their recipes. If you like to cook, and you aren't afraid to throw yourself into something that seems complex for an off-the-charts end result, you should subscribe. They even run tests on kitchen appliances, knives, olive oils ... you name it. It's like a science lab dedicated to making the very best of everything culinary.
If you're willing to do a little detective work, All Recipes can be a great resources if you sort by review, find recipes that have at least 50+ reviews, and reject the bottom 90%. Some of those top recipes turned out to be wonderful, especially if you read the highest rated comments that show the modifications some of the people made. A big benefit here is that lots of folks generously upload their pictures so you can see how they fared. Sometimes, you can take parts and adapt if for your own use.
Quite a few of the dishes I've posted come from recipes found in what are considered some of the best cookbooks of all time. For example, right now we're going through a Marcella Hazan kick from her legendary tome, though that's pretty evident by the number of dinners I've posted showing pictures of the finished products! Recently, I'm rather fond of the Gourmet Magazine compendium. They did a good job on it. The last time I posted anything from it was back in January when I made a coffee-infused chocolate cake.
Hope that helps!
Felipe
October 17, 2013
Replying to Joshua Kennon
No worries Joshua! Looking forwards to trying some of those recipes! I´ll definetely buy Marcella Hazan´s book.
normal guy
August 2, 2013
Joshua,
Don't forget to get your cholesterol checked.
Karina Suarez
August 3, 2013
Looks very good.
Joshua Kennon
October 5, 2013
Replying to Karina Suarez
It was. We are still relatively inexperienced with this type of cuisine, but I'm excited to try more recipes!
Dheeraj
June 3, 2015
pardon but here is what i am thinking ...... Josh kennon can't go out and buy the content for this dish and i can ..... for cheaper and more authentically ......... muhahahahhahahahahhahahahahhah
and i have a mom who can make it. more muhahahahahahahah 😀
Question(Just saying): I am no cook ..... far form it ..... glutton rather then gourmet..... but don't you think you should have chopped onions and tomatoes a lil bigger ..... peasants cutting these things like these ? and cashew is considered costly ( even in my family .... peasants?) ..... and rice ? i have a dispute with mom on this ..... with a dish so good .... try making some indian bread .... naan if you are upto it. of all limited people i know ( i have not seen anybody eat them together ok sorry wiki says they do in Bengal .... not surprising 😀 ) ..... sorry for nitpick ... but i thought "you were my brother sitting on kitchen floor top" 🙂 .... within few hours we will go to indian wedding and they are famous for serving this. interestingly we seldom make it at home and mostly eat them at weddings ..... considering paneer costly. i only eat paneer based dishes at weddings. assumption: the geographical area i live in have more of palak paneer so views are biased ....... i suggest you try that. ....... and make some more in quantity, you feeding birds with that ? 😛
PS : wiki shares your problem with Indian dishes pics