Fry

Roasted tomato, basil and paneer curry

March 10, 2021
3
1 Ratings
  • Serves four
Author Notes

A fusion of worlds, not just a traditional recipe. Tomatoes are sweet and intense when roasted and the basil is a natural pairing. The paneer soaks up these sweet and scented ingredients when simmered together. —Deena Kakaya

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Ingredients
  • 250 grams paneer cut into 2cm cubes
  • 6 deep red tomatoes
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 2 cardamom pods
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1/4 teaspoon mustard seeds
  • 2 cloves
  • 1 small stick of cinnamon
  • 200 milliliters water
  • 75 grams basil, very finely chopped (I used a food processor)
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 4 spring onions
  • 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
  • 2 green chillies
Directions
  1. Cut the tomatoes and in half and drizzle them with oil. Sit them on some baking paper with the cut side upwards and roast them in the oven at 150degrees until they look lightly brown and intense. Whilst the tomatoes are roasting, mid-way add 4 cloves of garlic in their shell and let them roast too.
  2. Heat a non-stick pan and add 1 tbsp. oil to shallow fry the paneer until it is lightly golden. Remove onto some kitchen paper and drain off the excess oil.
  3. Once the tomatoes and garlic are roasted, lightly blitz them together so that you have a chunky sauce.
  4. Heat 2 tbsp. in the non-stick pan add the cumin seeds, turmeric, chillies, cardamom pods, cloves and cinnamon and allow the seeds to sizzle before stirring in the onions and salt. Sauté for a couple of minutes.
  5. Pour in the tomato and garlic sauce and bring the mixture to a simmer before sprinkling in the paprika and garam masala and then the paneer with water.
  6. Simmer for 7-8 minutes before mixing in the basil and then simmer for a further two minutes.
  7. Serve hot with chapatti or rice.

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1 Review

aurora March 10, 2021
While the flavors were great, the recipe has way too many errors for me to recommend to other readers (roast tomatoes at 150???) -- If I did this dish again, I would just use a can of roasted tomatoes and use more water. Garam masala was missing from the ingredients list but mentioned in the directions so I used 1 teaspoon and it seemed about right. I had a lot of trouble frying the paneer and wished there was more direction (temp heat, time etc) as I had never done this before but even with failing at frying, flavors were good.