palak paneer (an indian preparation of spinach with cheese)

if you've ever had palak paneer (spinach with cheese) at an indian restaurant and wanted to make it for yourself, here is your opportunity.

first, prepare some paneer - see:

http://www.myhealthgate.com/recipe/148/paneer

while the milk is coming to a boil, you can start chopping the vegetables for making the spinach. use 1 gallon of milk to prepare the paneer for the quantity of spinach described below. the paneer will not be added until the spinach is ready.

ingredients:

• 4 medium tomatoes
• 2 medium yellow onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• olive oil
• 1/8 teaspoon of freshly ground cinnamon (or a little less if you don't like a strong cinnamon taste).
• 1 tablespoon of an allspice (see http://www.myhealthgate.com/recipe/565/allspice-wonderful-for-indian-coo...).
• salt (start with 2 teaspoons and add more if you like)
• 2 lb of frozen spinach

directions:

1. make sure you're thinking happy thoughts because this impacts any food or beverage which you might prepare, and so impacts the person consuming that food or beverage (including yourself).
2. finely chop the onion.
3. coarsely chop the tomatoes.
4. finely mince the garlic.
5. heat the olive oil in a 5 quart pot on medium heat. if you prefer, you can use ghee instead of olive oil.
6. put the onions in the pot and cook on medium heat until the onions become translucent and start to brown. you may need to turn up the heat at the end to get the onions to brown if you were generous with the oil.
7. add the garlic to the pot.
8. once the garlic starts to brown, add the tomatoes, allspice, cinnamon and salt.
9. mix it up well, cover and cook on medium-high heat until the tomatoes start to blend together.
10. add the spinach. mix together and cover and let it cook until it's done (maybe 30 minutes).
11. turn off the stove and place the spinach into a blender. don't fill the blender more than half way. you'll need a pan to temporarily hold the blended spinach until you've blended all of the spinach, at which time you'll place the blended spinach back in the original pan. blend the spinach just until it becomes smooth. do not overblend.
12. turn the stove back on at medium heat with the blended spinach in the original pan. have a taste, and add whatever may be missing.
13. gently add in the cubed paneer. i don't fry my paneer, but you can lightly fry your paneer first if you like. my approach is to add a layer of paneer cubes, then gently turn the spinach to bring up another layer of spinach to which i can add more paneer cubes. the idea here is to add the paneer without having the pieces crumble.
14. let the paneer sit in the spinach for 30 minutes or more before serving.

enjoy!