Matar paneer | Creamy restaurant style Mattar paneer
Matar or matter or mutter paneer is a classic North Indian Punjabi side dish made with green peas and paneer (cottage cheese). This matar paneer has soft creamy texture and served along with phulka, chapatti, roti, naan and many other Indian bread items. Enjoy this green peas paneer gravy with jeera rice and any veg pulao variety.
Ingredients
Ingredients:
- Fresh/frozen green peas – 100gm
- Paneer – 200gm
- Onion – 1 medium size
- Tomato – 2
- Ginger – 1 inch
- Garlic – 6pods
- Oil/ghee to cook – 1tbs
- Cumin/jeera seeds – 1tsp
- Garam masala powder – ¼ tsp
- Chilli powder – ¾ tsp
- Coriander powder – ½ tsp
- Bay leaf – 1
- Cinnamon – 1inch
- Cardamom - 2
- Cashews – 5
- Cream – 2tsp
- Kasturi methi (dried fenugreek leaves) – 1tsp
- Coriander leaves -few
- Salt – 1 tsp or as required
Instructions
Preparation:
- Chop onion into small cubes.
- Wash and chop tomatoes.
- Peel garlic pods and ginger piece.
- Cut paneer into cubes.
- Soak cashews in warm water.
- Boil green peas with little water. Drain and keep aside.
Recipe:
- Heat a kadai with a teaspoon of oil. Add ginger and garlic, fry them for a minute.
- Add chopped onion and cook them till transparent.
- Add chopped tomatoes and a pinch of salt.
- Add cashews.
- Close the lid of the kadai. Let the tomatoes cook soft.
- Switch off the stove and let it cool down. Transfer the contents to a mixie jar and grind it to a nice paste.
- Now heat the same kadai, add ghee or oil.
- Add jeera seeds, bay leaf, cardamom and cinnamon one by one. Fry them for a minute until you get nice aroma.
- Add ground onion tomato and cashew paste and sauté well.
- Add chilli and coriander powders.
- Add garam masala powder if using. I feel whole spices give enough flavor and thus I did not use garam masala powder.
- Cook the mixture for few minutes by stirring continuously.
- Add cooked green peas and mix well.
- Now add a cup of water and adjust the consistency. Close the lid and let the mixture cook well.
- After five minutes a nice red color achieved as shown in the picture.
- Now add paneer cubes.
- Add required salt. Let it boil for a mins.
- Add crushed kasturi methi leaves.
- Add milk cream and mix. Garnish with coriander leaves.
- Serve hot with roti, phulkas, jeera rice or veg pulao.
Notes
Tips/notes: 1) Fresh or frozen green peas are good to use. If using dried peas then soak them overnight and cook in pressure cooker. 2) Adjust the spice level according to your taste. 3) You can add ¼ tsp of sugar too. It’s optional. 4) I have used homemade cream. It’s very easy to make at home. Collect the malai(top fat layer) formed from boiled milk and store in fridge in a tight container. When you need fresh cream take a table spoon of malai and blend using the small jar in mixer. Fresh cream is ready. Or you can beat fast with a fork. 5) Fridge stored malai stays good for a month. 6) Adding kasturi methi gives an excellent aroma to this north Indian dish.
Nutrition
Calories: 140kcal
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