Shaam savera -- palak paneer kofta in tomato gravy

Hello friends! My today's recipe is not a new one but I am sure a lot of people who have seen Chef Sanjeev Kapoor would know this dish.Shaam Savera was the very first dish I saw on tv and I wanted to try but those days I never liked paneer so I had to rule it out. Over the years my love for paneer developed and recently I saw this dish again on tv and thought to myself. why not I try now. It may not be perfect as I modified it to suit my taste but it turned out awesome.

Ingredients for Kofta:

• 2 Bunch spinach leaves
• 100 gms paneer
• salt to taste
• 2 tsp black pepper powder
• 1 tsp cumin seed
• 1tbsp garlic chopped
• 3-4 green chillies chopped
• 3-4 tbsp gram flour
• 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
• 1/4 cup corn flour
• oil for frying +2tbsp

Method:
Blanch the spinach leaves. Squeeze out all the water. Let it cool and chop the leaves fine. Keep it aside. In another bowl, mash the paneer with little salt and black pepper. Here I added  2tbsp of corn flour to it. Mix and make small balls and keep aside. In a pan, heat 2tbsp oil, add cumin seeds, chopped garlic and green chillies. Saute it well. Add gram flour and saute it more. Add turmeric powder, chopped spinach and salt and mix well. Stir continously till the mixture is dry. Set it aside to cool.  Once cooled and dry enough take a portion of spinach and flatten it in your palm. Put the paneer balls in the center, bring the edges together and close and make it like spinach ball. If spinach is still soft add some corn flour to it. Make all the balls this way and roll in the corn flour and shake off the excess flour. Heat oil in pan and deep fry them for 2-3mins. Remove and put on kitchen paper to drain off excess oil.
Try one ball first and if it breaks add more corn flour to spinach.

Ingredients for gravy:

• 8-10 tomatoes
• 1tbsp oil
• 2tbsp chopped garlic
• 3-4 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp red chilli powder
• 2-3 tsp garam masala powder
• salt to taste
• 1tsp turmeric powder
• 1tsp kasoori methi (optional)
• fresh cream to garnish

 Method:
Blanch and puree the tomatoes and keep aside. Heat oil in pan.  Add chopped garlic to saute it lightly. Add tomato puree and salt and mix well. Now add turmeric powder and red chilli powder to it. Mix and add slight water and cook for few minutes till the puree is cooked.  Now add butter and garam masala and mix well. The gravy is ready.

For serving,  pour the gravy in bowl. Half  the spinach koftas and arrange on the gravy. Garnish with kasoori methi and fresh cream.

Note: Add koftas just before serving.  Enjoy the delicious and yummy   shaam savera  with roti, chapati or even rice.

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Chettinad Pakoda Kuzhambu

Hello friends! As you all know, we have monthly event called SNC meaning south vs north challenges. Each month a challenger from each zone challenges other team to try out the region's authentic dish and the brainchild of this event is Divya Pramil from you too can cook. For details click on Divya's site if you want to join.This month challenge is by Priya Suresh from Priya's Versatile recipes and its traditional Chettinad Pakoda Kuzhambu. 

Looking at the recipe my first thought was that it resembles vada curry we made earlier but going through recipe thoroughly I realised its bit different. I and family really enjoyed this dish and though its supposed to be spicy I had to cut down a bit as we do not eat too spicy food.



Ingredients for pakoda:

• 1/2 cup chana dal/Bengal gram dal
• 2-3 dry red chillies
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• salt to taste
• oil for frying

Method for pakodas:

Soak chana dal for 2-3hours and grind it  to coarse paste with dry red chillies, salt and  fennel seeds. Heat oil and take small paste and deep fry in oil like pakodas. Fry all the pakodas till golden brown. Remove on paper to drain off excess oil.

Ingredients for gravy:

• 2 onions
• 2 tomatoes
• 6-8 garlic pods
• 2-3 green chillies
• 1tsp coriander powder
• 1 tsp red chilli powder
• 1tsp turmeric powder
• salt to taste
• 2tbsp oil
• coriander leaves for garnishing

For seasoning:

• 1inch Cinnamon stick
• 2 Cloves
• 2 Green cardamoms
• 2 Bay leaves
• 1tsp Fennel seeds
• Few curry leaves

To grind:

• 1tsp Poppy seeds
• 4tbsp Grated coconut
• 6 Cashew nuts
• 1tbsp Roasted chana dal

Method:

To make paste, grind the ingredients given in the grind list with required amount of water. Heat oil in pan and fry the ingredients mentioned under seasoning.  Chop onions and tomatoes and add it to the pan. Add garlic and green chillies and saute the vegetables.  Add the paste we made before to this gravy. Mix well and cook for two mins. Add some more water and add salt, turmeric powder and chilli powder. Mix well and reduce the heat. Let the vegetables cook and gravy should remain bit thinner.  Once gravy is cooked add the pakodas and gently mix and switch off the gas.

Pakodas tend to soak the gravy so make sure to put them in the end. I added them just a little before serving. 

Serve hot garnished with coriander leaves. We enjoyed this with chapati though this can be served with rice too.

Thanks priya for the yummy dish and I would love to make this again.

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Watermelon popsicles

Hello friends! My today's dish is impromptu dish and you can say a sort of just clicked to make this. Usually, we have watermelon as fruit only in my home but I never did try to get innovative with use of watermelon. Seeing people make halwa and so many things I thought, its time I should try to do something else with it. Thats when this idea hit me. It was a big hit in my home and my neice totally loved it calling it as ice ka gola.

Watermelon has huge water content and is very good to have in summer and though now monsoon is about to start but nothing stops us from enjoying this lovely fruit. So here we go and its very easy with no cooking needed. Just assemble and you are ready.

Ingredients:

• Half a watermelon
• sugar to taste
• some icecream sticks

Method:
Peel and de seed the watermelon pieces. Blend the piece to make watermelon juice. As the watermelon was already sweet I  did not add any sugar but if needed adjust it. The juice can be served chilled. Take Popsicle mould or kulfi mould. Pour the juice in it and put in freezer to set for one hour. My mould was stick less so I removed them after one hour and added sticks and let it freeze for close to 10 hrs. Remove from mould and serve chilled.

Enjoy the iced watermelon gola as my neice calls this one. Gola is very famous street side popsicle in Mumbai and its crushed ice flavoured with various syrups. I think this one was more healthy here what I made.

Linking it to Guru's give away event

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Eggless No bake Mango cheese cake

Hello friends! My today's dish's first inspiration came from American Tv serial FRIENDS. There was an episode where rachael and chandler end up eating cheese cake meant for someone else. I kept wondering about this cheese cake and was longing to taste it. Some months back at a bakery near  my place had strawberry cheese cake and i bought one small piece. It was soft cheesy, creamy and yet too yummy. I wanted to try since then and had seen many versions of cheese cake while blog hopping. Time had come for me to try this out so right now this version is mix and match of what I had seen across the blogging world. Feel free to try out any version but this by far was the easiest one.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup crushed digestive biscuits
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 cup mango puree
• 1/2 cup paneer
•  3-4 tbsp agar agar or gelatine or chinagrass
• 1/2 cup fresh cream
• sugar to taste
• 8-10tbsp of warm water

Method:
I have used the glasses here to set my cheese cake and other versions are using spring form cake pan.
Mix soft butter with crushed biscuits and set it in base of glass or pan. Keep it in fridge to set for  10-15mins. In another bowl crumble paneer and mix cream with it. Blend it till it looks creamy.  Keep it in fridge. Heat the water and add chinagrass pieces to it till they dissolve completely. Add the dissolved pieces in  mango puree and mix it well. Take out the creamy paneer from fridge and add half the mango puree to this mixture. Mix gently and pour the cream mixture on top of the crushed biscuit layer. Do this very gently. Keep in fridge for at least 1 hour till this mixture sets. Once its set, add the remaining mango puree on top of the creamy layer. This third layer would be little thinner. 
Since I made it very first time my third layer did not set properly but the look and taste was great. Keep it in fridge for  6-8hrs or you can have it next day as it sets very well by then. 

Enjoy the lovely cheese cake.

Note:  From what I read all over sites about cheese cake, some people use hung curd with cream cheese. I tried paneer with fresh cream to get creamy cheesy texture.
 

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