Palak Paneer

Don't try this at home.

• 2 10 oz package of chopped frozen spinach or 4 cups of fresh finely chopped spinach
  
• Farmer’s cheese
  
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
  
• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 1 teaspoon chopped ginger
  
• 2 teaspoon coriander powder (dhania)
  
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder (haldi)
  
• 2-4 chili peppers, minced
  
• 1 tablespoon oil
  
• 1 teaspoon cumin seed (jeera)
  
• 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
  
• 4 tablespoons of whole wheat flour
  
• 1.5 cup milk
  

Blend spinach until creamy but not pasty. Mix the whole wheat flour with the milk and set aside. Cube the farmer’s cheese and fry on medium high heat. Remove and set aside. Then add the onion, pepper, chili, cumin, ginger, coriander, turmeric, and salt. Cook until it’s pretty soft, and then add the spinach. Cook over low heat for about 10 minutes, covered. Add the milk mixture and let it cook until the consistency is right. Then take off the heat and fold in the cheese.

Thoughts: OK, so deep frying the cheese did NOT work at all. That was just the first disaster. So I threw SOME of the cheese into the oil and it promptly melted. Maybe you can't use farmer's cheese as a replacement for paneer (as one web site suggested). Next, I was looking at 3 recipes... 2 used tomatoes, 1 used red bell pepper. But I only had bell pepper, so I went for it. I think tomatoes would have been much better. From there, it worked out OK. We wound up adding a ton more seasonings because you couldn't really taste anything. I added a little bit of lemon juice, too, and I think that helped. We served it over rice. There's agreement that we can tell it's supposed to be Indian in origin, and the flavor isn't BAD, but it's not... great, either. And it's way far from the mark in terms of Palak Paneer. Well, I mean, why call it DCCDI if there aren't some D's.

Disaster Index: 5/10