I love paneer. The first dish I tasted in a restaurant, on officially going out for lunch in college (when someone gave a treat, of course), was paneer butter masala. And I literally fell in love with it in the first sight. Thereafter, whenever I go to a north indian restaurant, the side dish or the starter has to be paneer. It used to be precious item bought from the grocery store, along with fancy sauces, when I wanted to splurge. I know, you can make it easily at home, but I just have not tried it yet. Recently, as the cooking hobby is creeping onto me owing to my food loving husband, I wanted to do the most common dish, PBM (Paneer Butter Masala).
The first time I did at home, I did it on last Saturday. Inspired by Masterchef Australia, I kept my egg timer at 60 minutes, and started off with a bang. But at the end of 75 mins, I ended up with a dish that was not creamy, but sour and bitter to taste.
The next day, on a Sunday lazy morning, when I was emptying my pans for the cooking maid to clean, I saw the mixie jar atop the mixie, with flies flying in all directions just like the pigeons on one of the famous junctions in Delhi . It was the cashew paste I forgot to add to my experiment, the day before.
The next time I did PBM was yesterday. I finished it in a jiffy within 40 minutes, without referring to the recipe. The previous day, I had planned to make Aloo and paneer tikkis in the evening for my kid, but there was no salt. And by the time, I got few spoons from my neighbour, the chit chat started and went on and on. So to go along with PBM, I had stuffing for parathas ready.
Thus, on October 24th 2013, we had an awesome dinner with restaurant style parathas and the fatty creamy paneer butter masala with a dollop of butter.
