It was fusion weekend at our kitchen! After a blissful saturday nap, as I made chai, K started craving for the Pan fried chilli paneer at Bamboo Garden. The restaurant has an Indo-Chinese or Indianized-Chinese menu. I'm not too sure of the origins of this cuisine, but my first encounter with this was at Bombay when I was a kid visiting cousins. The street vendors/ hawkers made such delicious hakka/ schezuan noodles and gobi manchurian. As someone put it..it's a perfect blend of noodles from China and spices from India.
OK...Coming back to my story, once K mentioned Pan fried chilli paneer...I HAD to have it then and there. Simply because I just LOVEEE this appetizer item on the menu and have created a loyal fan following for the same. This evening, we tried to recreate that magical taste, altho we were missing green bell pepper, an essential ingredient (substituting with yellow was not a bad idea).
We started off with no recipe to refer to, but our memory of the taste. The end product was very very close to the original, and I'm sure we'll perfect it at the next attempt.
Pan-fried Chilli Paneer
Ingredients
Paneer (indian cottage cheese) - ½ slab
Onion - ½ sliced
Garlic - 4 pods chopped finely
Ginger - 1 inch piece julienned
Red and Green Chilli - 4 nos chopped
Green bell pepper - ½ sliced
Corn Starch - 2 tbsp
Ground Black Pepper - ¼ tsp
Soya Sauce - 2 tsp
Salt
Sugar - a pinch
Oil for shallow frying - 2-3 tbsp
Chopped Spring Onions for garnishing
Method
- Cut Paneer into rectangles.
- Prepare a light cornstarch mixture by adding water and a pinch of salt.
- Drench the paneer rectangles in the cornstarch mixture and shallow fry them in a pan until golden brown. Set aside.
- Add a tsp of oil to a hot wok, and throw in the onions, ginger, garlic and red and green chillies.
- Add salt and soya sauce.
- Once the veges start sizzling, add the green bell pepper and cook for half a min
- Add a tsp of the remaining cornstarch and a pinch of sugar
- Add the fried paneer cubes and let it sit for half a min more.
- Garnish with chopped spring onions and serve hot.
6 Responses:
THis is awesome..!!! how i wish i could get such lovely paneer here in Germany... could have made this right away!!
Naveen...i heard the story of your chilli paneer craving!!! Have a good flight....catch you back at UK time!
hi usha says add a pinch of ajino moto to the gravy(ofcourse once in it is ok to add AM) Yes it tastes more authentic!!
this is a really great recipe, definitely very very close to the bamboo garden one - but i had a bit of trouble with thinner slices of paneer, so i think thicker ones would be best. that way it's slightly crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, instead of chewy (like some of mine turned out).
just a thought - what if you used thinned out pakora batter as coating for the paneer (instead of corn starch and salt) before pan frying, just to give it some extra flavor? the crisp would be much more successful too.
but overall - GREAT recipe :)
Thanks for your comment! Using a thinned out pakora batter is a great idea. Maybe I'll try that some time!
Try this with jalapenos. Replace the capsicum with jalapenos. Do not use green chillis when you use jalapenos. Here in US Jalapenos are in plenty and they are great with all chinese recipies as they cater to the spice lovers.
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