Simply Cook – Spinach and Paneer

Review of Simply Cooks Spinach and Paneer recipe, detailing what you need to buy and how easy it is too cook.

In India this spinach and paneer dish is called Palak Paneer, its a garlicky, tomato and onion broth with the nice firm paneer cheese.

Preparation

I like to get everything prepared first, with a lot of recipes from Simply Cook or Hello Fresh there cooking times don’t seem to fully take into account the preparation time, nor do they allow you to prepare the next stage while your cooking and you find yourself getting into trouble with trying to watch whats cooking while chopping veg for the next stage. At the same time I also get all the utensils I need to hand so I’m not trying to find that tin opener at the back of the draw while the meal is cooking.

So preparation before hand is the key.

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For this recipe I prepared the following before starting

• Cube the paneer cheese
• Finely cfhop the onion.
• Roughly chop the tomatoes
• Measure out 100ml of single cream
• Wash your spinach – yep it looks like a lot of spinach don’t worry.
• Get a high sided non stick pan or wok (it does need to have high sides for this recipe)
• Spatula / wooden spoon
• Small teaspoon for getting the ingredients out of the little pots.

Cooking

Stage 1

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Heating a little oil in the pan and waiting until its hot before adding the paneer to fry gently for around 5 minutes. Don’t let them sit keep them moving constantly otherwise you will get really burnt sides. You do however want to get a light crisping of the cubes as.

Get your oven on warming up for your naan breads later.

Stage 2

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Heat a little olive oil in a large sided pan and fry the onions for 3 minuets until sligghtly translucent and golden.

Add in the garlic paste and stir in quickly, followed by the chopped tomatoes and the korma paste, again thoroughly mixing everything together. Turn the heat up for a while and let the tomatoes break down a bit (see the image).

Once the tomatoes have softened, reduce the heat to a simmer and add the cream, letting it cook through fro about 5 minutes.

Stage 3

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Add the spinach – yes don’t worry it looks like there is way too much but it will wilt down as in the pictures. I find carefully stirring the spinach in helps this process instead of leaving it to steam down.

At this stage I get the packet naan breads into the oven to warm through.

Once the spinach has wilted down into the sauce, add back in the Paneer and half of the nigella seed blend letting it simmer for another 3 minutes.

Serving Up

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Get your sous chef to ladle into bowls, sprinkle on the remaining nigella seeds blend and serve up with the naans.

As you can see there’s more than enough for two people.

Results

I hope I have adequately shown how easy the recipe is to follow by adding pictures to highlight the process that Simply Cooks cards don’t contain. I feel that there’s nothing taxing in this recipe and if a BadDad can do it anyone can.

The cooking (if all the preps done beforehand) takes 20 min as stated on the card, the preparations probably take another 3-4 min at most so its not a huge task at the end of the day.

Whilst my results aren’t the same as the perfection on the recipe card I think it looks appetizing – the sous chef did well again in the presentation.

The meal delivered as described a spicy rich creamy broth with firm paneer cheese cubes.

If you follow the link below you can get your first Simply Cook box for free and we will get a discount off our next box.

Also have a look at our overview of home recipe boxes we have tried in the past.