Palak Paneer : Garam Masala Tuesdays

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Palak Paneer | The Novice Housewife
My mom is in town, which means I get the pleasure of eating home cooked meals made by someone else for a change. Yay for me! My mom doesn’t cook as often as she did earlier, but she is an awesome cook and anything cooked by her is always a treat. Thanks to her and her interest in cooking, my brother and I were exposed to different cuisines very early on in life. She is the reason for my love affair with food, and for that I will always be grateful.

Today for GMT, I am sharing her recipe for palak paneer- a spinach based curry with indian cheese cubes. While it is best to separately cook each element in the recipe since it helps to bring out more flavors, it is easier and quicker to just grind the ingredients together and then cook the mixture. It still tastes great, so if you are short on time  or want to spend less time in the kitchen and more time with friends and family, this recipe works very well.

I made the paneer fresh at home but you can use store-bought paneer which is easily available at any indian grocery store.

This post would have gone up earlier in the day today but with mom around and my cousin, who was also here for a week, and who left today, time just flew and writing the post got delayed. I am a little sleepy now, so I will keep this post short and jump straight to the recipe.

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Aloo Gobhi for GMT

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Aloo gobhi | The Novice Housewife

When I got married, my mom gave me a small diary with a few handwritten Indian recipes she thought I would find useful. I had never cooked indian food before I got married, so when I did start cooking once I came to the US, these recipes came very handy. One of the recipes in the diary was for aloo gobhi- a spiced potato and cauliflower indian dish. A favorite of many and a relatively easy and no hassle dish to prepare.

My mom is in Canada these days. She came to Canada to spend some time with my grandparents, since they were both very ill. She could not meet my grandmother before she passed away but was able to spend some time with my grandfather. She stayed on to spend time with her brother and his family in Canada and tomorrow she comes to visit and stay with me for a month. The other day when I was talking to her she mentioned that she had made aloo gobhi for lunch and since I had not cooked this dish in a while I thought of making it today. It also gave me an opportunity to click pictures and post a recipe for Garam Masala Tuesdays.

I have tweaked the original recipe a little after making it several times to suit my liking. In the original recipe, my mom did not mention kasoori methi, but I like the added flavor that it brings to the dish. You can leave out the kasoori methi (dried fenugreek leaves) if you cant find them but they are easily available at any indian grocery store. So is amchoor powder (dried mango powder), but if you can’t find it, use lemon juice.

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Shami Kebabs: Lamb kebabs with mint onion stuffing

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Lamb Kebabs | The Novice Housewife

Out of all the kebabs, shami kebabs are one of my favorites. Invented for a toothless nawab of Lucknow during the reign of the Mughals in India, these kebabs were made so fine that no teeth would be required to eat them and they would just melt in the nawab’s mouth. Or so the story goes. Who knows what the truth is. But whatever be the origin, my taste buds are thankful for their existence.

The recipe for these shami kebabs differs slightly than the tunde ke kebabs I have posted earlier. While both of them are soft and silky smooth in the mouth, unlike the tunde ke kebabs, shami kebabs have a mint-onion stuffing in them. And while the original tunde kebab recipe claims to have 160 spices in it, the spices more or less in both the recipes I use are the similar with a slight variation in the quantities.

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