“Aloo Matar Paneer” is another delicious preparation from Paneer or Indian cottage cheese and good enough to impress your vegetarian guests.

I try to follow a Bengali cooking show, called “Rannaghar”, almost regularly. Once I saw this recipe in one of its episodes, and tried at home to find it amazingly tasty. In Kolkata, you can find quite a few traditional families who still keep up the tradition of celebrating Durga puja at home which they started decades back. This episode of “Rannaghar” took place at one of these traditional houses during Durga puja and this recipe of Aloo Matar Paneer, prepared by women of that family, is served as Prasad, the food offered to god.  This Aloo matar paneer with Radhaballvi is served to all the guests and relatives during the festival.

We Bengali generally like to prepare vegetarian dishes without using onion and garlic. You can find many recipes of Matar paneer using onion and garlic, so one can say this recipe is more a Bengali version of that.

Ingredients to serve 4 :

1. Paneer or Indian cottage cheese – 200 gm.
2. Potato (medium size) – 2
3. Capsicum or Bell pepper – ½
4. Green peas – ½ cup
5. Chopped tomato (small size) – 1
6. Green chilli – 2 or 3
7. Ginger – 1 inch
8. Cashew nut – 5 to 6
9. Pea nut – 8 to 10
10. Charmagaz – 1 tbspoon
11. Plain yogurt – 2 tbspoon
12. Fresh cream – 2 – 3 tbspoon
13. Garam masala powder – ½ teaspoon
14. Bay leaf – 1 or 2
15. Red chilli powder – ½ teaspoon
16. Salt & sugar to taste
17. Ghee – 1½ tbspoon
18. Cooking oil -2tbspoon

    

Procedure :

Soak the nuts and charmagaz for 10 minutes in water and then make a smooth paste of them.

Make another paste with ginger and green chillies.

Cut the paneer into medium size cubes.

Peel the potatoes and cut into medium size pieces. Also cut the capsicum into medium size square pieces.

Now heat the oil in a large pan over medium flame. Add the potato pieces into it, sprinkle over some salt and shallow fry them. Keep the fried potatoes aside.

Now add 1 tbspoon of ghee into the remaining oil. Add bay leaves and ¼ teaspoon of garam masala powder, saute for a while and add chopped tomato, red chilli powder and a bit of sugar. Cook till the tomatoes get soften and then add ginger-chilli paste, nuts & charmagaz paste, green peas and capsicum pieces. Again cook till the oil comes out from the mixture and the raw flavour of the ingredients goes away. Now add the fried potatoes, paneer cubes and yogurt and mix them very well. Add water to make gravy, according to your preference, season with salt and sugar. Now put the lead of the pan and let it cook for few minutes over low – medium flame. As the gravy thickens add fresh cream and give it a good stir, cook for another couple of minutes. Now put the gas off and sprinkle over the remaining ghee and garam masala powder. Again put the lid of the pan and let it stand for few minutes.

Serve with roti, paratha, puri or rice.

Note :

1. Adjust the chilli according to your taste.
2. If you don’t have “charmagaz” then you can skip that.
3. Ghee is one of the key ingredients of this recipe. It’s beautiful aroma adds an extra taste to the dish, so try to use pure ghee.