Lazy saturday & Bread Pizza

For a while I have been thinking to do a daily post of simply what we ate in whole day. NaBloPoMo is a good opportunity for that. Yesterday was Karwachauth. It's a Indian festival where married woman keep fast for their husbands long life. It's hard for me to understand the connection between woman's fast and husbands long life but this is one of festivals so wide and popular that most woman in my opinion do not care about the connection. Anyways, after a long day of fast it was bit lazy  start to Saturday. P was out before even I got up. So gave  A breakfast of cereal and R some grated banana with milk. When P came back I quickly fixed this bread pizza.  I love my toaster oven.  It is so handy.

Bread Pizza can have many variations. Here I diced some Red and green bell pepper, onion, tomato. Mixed them and added some red pepper flakes and salt. Brushed the bread slice with some jarred marinara, topped it with vegetable mixture and sprinkled some grated cheese. Baked in my toaster oven for 10 minutes  at 400C and broiled in last 2 minutes.

As for cheese I like Kraft shredded mozzarella with Philadelphia cream cheese . Easy to melt and creamy this cheese is very handy to fix something for my picky toddler. Back in India my mother in law makes it with paneer and my husband loves that version. She mixes crumbled paneer with all the veggies and add it on top of buttered slices of bread before baking them.

So after this , lunch got little late. I just made some rice to go along with leftover Chhole from previous night. As for dinner  again there were some subji's from earlier in week. So I made hot chapatis to go along with them. So this day was for most part  no major cooking day which I really liked. R had some khichdi in afternoon and  roasted semolina with milk in dinner.

Paneer Butter Masala

I do not make rich gravies like this often. Only time I do is when we have company. Not that I want to offer unhealthy stuff it's just that richness makes it more than ordinary. But this time I made this Paneer Butter Masala just for ourselves on weekday as an experiment. Sure it worked. This is very close to the way we are used to eat in restaurants. Do give it a try.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

1 1/2 cup cubed Paneer

4 Medium size tomato

2 medium size onion

2 tbsp ginger garlic paste

3 tbsp cashews

1/4 cup milk (preferably full fat)

3 tbsp oil

1 1/2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp Kasuri Methi (Dried Fenugreek leaves)

1 tbsp Honey

1 tsp Cardamom powder

2 tsp Garam masala

2 tsp Red Chilli Powder (If you have Kashmiri Chilli powder that will add a nice color)

Salt to taste

Recipe

Chop tomato and onions in quarters.

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a pan. Add cashews and stir them. After about a minute add chopped onion. Saute for 2 minutes. Then add chopped tomatoes. Cook them for about 6 minutes.

Let the cooked tomato-onion-cashew mixture cool for a while. Then blend it using a blender. Strain this puree to get that silky smooth gravy.

Now again heat a pan and add butter and 1 tbsp oil. Add ginger-garlic paste. After a minute when raw smell from ginger garlic has gone add red chili powder. You may want to lower the heat at this point so that red chill powder doesn't burn. To this add strained puree.

Add salt. Now cover the pan and let it simmer on low heat for about 15 minutes.

By now fat should have separated . Add honey, cardamom and Garam Masala and crushed fenugreek leaves. Let it simmer for another couple of minutes.

At this point if you want you can add 1/4 cup cream for another layer of creaminess. I opted to add full fat milk. Finally add cubed paneer. Stir well and serve hot with naan/ roti.