One of the very first things I started to miss during quarantine were my weekly visits to the Indian buffet for lunch. Once a week I’d meet my spouse at an awesome local Indian restaurant and we’d sample the various dishes on the buffet.
One of my favorite things to get is palak/sagg paneer. As one of my co-workers who is from Indian explained to me which you are getting depends on what green is used in the dish. If it is spinach then is is palak paneer but if it is some OTHER kind of green such as mustard greens, chard, etc then it is saag paneer. Honestly I can’t taste the difference they both are awesome whichever one I get.
I’ve been missing Indian food so much that I decided to go searching for recipes to try to make some myself. We have a local Indian/asian grocery and they stock all the necessary spices and fresh paneer. So after getting a recipe and doing some shopping. I set off to work.
I made a few tweaks to this recipe. First I used ALL spinach, no mustard greens. Second, I didn’t use an instant pot. I followed the instructions for sauteing the spices, chili, garlic, ginger etc. At the same time, I steamed the spinach separately. Then I put the spinach and sauteed stuff in a blender to puree. Then it all went back into the original pot to which I added the paneer which I cooked until warm. This works really well if you don’t have an instant pot or you are making a couple dishes- one on the stove and one in the instant pot. This recipe also reheats really well. So you could make it ahead or eat leftovers for lunch the next day.