Paneer Makhani - Cheese Curry

Serves: 4

Ingredients

200 g paneer, cut into 3/4 inch cubes
1/4 cup whole cashews, ground into powder
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, ground into powder
4 medium tomatoes, cut into small pieces (need about 2 cups)
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, chopped
1 green chili pepper, chopped
2 tablespoons ghee (or butter)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/8 teaspoon asafoetida (hing)
2 teaspoons ground coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 teaspoon sugar, or to taste
2 tablespoons double cream
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/4 cup fresh coriander, chopped

Directions

Purée the tomatoes, chili pepper, and ginger.
In a large saucepan on medium, heat the ghee and add the cumin seeds and asafoetida. When the cumin seeds start to crackle, add the powdered cashew and powdered sesame seeds, stir and cook for 1 – 2 minutes.
Pour in the tomato purée mixture, turmeric, and coriander. Add salt and sugar if desired, stir well, and cover the pot. Simmer for about 5 minutes until reduced and the sauce begins to separate from the oil.
In the meantime, slice the cheese and soak the cubes in 2 cups of boiled water for 5 minutes or so.
Lower the heat on your tomato sauce, add the cream, drained paneer cubes, and up to 1 cup of water if the sauce is too thick. Simmer for another few minutes. Remove from heat, stir in the garam masala and serve garnished with the fresh coriander.

My Notes

I didn’t have cashews so I used 1/8 cup ground almonds instead. I don’t have a spice grinder and I forgot about the sesame seeds until the last minute so I threw them in whole which I wouldn’t do again next time since it affected the texture. I wonder if 1 tablespoon Tahini would work in a pinch? Or I could just plan ahead a bit better and use a mortar and pestle. 😉
I used a 400 gram can of tomatoes (and their juice) instead of fresh. I also added about 4 caramelised onions to the tomato sauce mixture because I had them leftover from another recipe I was making.
Instead of green chili, I used 3 red chili peppers (seeds removed) and quickly pan-fried them to try to tone down the heat a bit, before blending them with the ginger and tomatoes. Because there was so much water from the canned tomatoes, I didn’t need to add any more. I used 200 ml of heavy cream because we prefer a rich sauce. I skipped the fresh coriander entirely.
This turned out really nice!

Since the recipe says it makes 4 servings and I wasn’t entirely sure how well leftovers would reheat in the microwave (because of the cheese), we only soaked 100 grams of paneer and added it to the half of the sauce that we were eating right away.
The other half of the sauce is in the fridge and we’ll reheat it in the next few days with freshly-soaked paneer.
I’m pretty sure the sauce (without the cheese) could be frozen.
Sometimes, I’ve pan-fried the soaked and drained paneer to give it a firmer texture before adding it into the sauce.