Palak Paneer - Cottage Cheese with a Spinach Sauce

When I lived in Los Angles, I witnessed this fascination with an Indian dish called Saag Paneer. I was unaware of the nomenclature all together- we have nothing known as saag paneer in India. Saag means vegetables in India and I always associated it with a popular punjabi dish known as sarson da saag which is an awesome combination of mustard greens and spinach. It turned out that saag paneer was nothing more than the popular palak ( translates into spinach) paneer( indian cottage cheese) which is a classic paneer dish.
Back in India, I used to wait for winter , when during the spinach season we would make palak paneer. However, here you can easliy use frozen spinach. I did not use the boxed variety, instead I just bought two bags of chopped and frozen spinach from Trader Joes. Remember to cook the spinach a lot so it turns really dark , or use an iron wok to cook, since the oxidation darkens the spinach.


32 oz frozen spinach
10 oz paneer
2 tomatoes
3 small onions
4 cloves of garlic
1" piece of ginger.
2 tspn coriander powder
1 tspn cumin power
1 tspn cumin seeds
3 tspn salt
3 thai chillies
pinc of nutmeg
2 tspn garam masala
1/2 cup dried fenugreek leaves
1/3 cup half and half

Instructions

1. Thaw the spinach and cook for 10 minutes to get rid of water.
2. Finely dice onion, garlic and ginger. Or pulse it.
3. Blend tomatoes and chilli.
4. To the oil add cumin seeds, heeng, and onions, garlic , ginger.
5. When slightly golden , add tomatoes.
6. Add coriander, turmeric, cumin powder, and cook till the paste sweats.
7. Add the paste to the spinach. Add water to the spinach and cook for 30-45 minutes.
8. Fry Paneer cubes and add to mixture.
9. Add garam masala, dried fenugreek powder, nutmeg and half and half.
10. Serve with paranthas or naan,