Tandoori | ashstylegourmet's Blog

Last week, as already mentioned in my earlier posts, I had made a tandoori platter for my lunch. It had lots of Tandoori prawns, Paneer, Ghongura prawns and also baked chicken breasts. A sudden snag in the laptop functioning resulted with me having to take a forced break from my writing and posting up the remaining tandoori posts. Finally, after a gap of couple days, the laptop snag is corrected and now it is functioning fine and here I am completing the few posts that were well due last week, yeah I had made a mental note of posting them :).

For this tandoori paneer recipe I used the cubes of paneer. I prefer to buy fresh paneer for making any dish, but always keep a packet or two of paneer in the freezer for those occasions when I get sudden urges of cooking paneer dishes and cannot go to the supermarket to buy. The packaged paneer cubes come handy when we are adding few cubes to a recipe, mixing vegetables and paneer, or adding few cubes to any potato filling etc. Keep paneer packet in the lower compartment of the refrigerator overnight, it gets thawed well. One can also empty the contents of the frozen paneer packet and keep on the kitchen platform for an hour or so and the cubes easily get thawed and can then be readily used for cooking. One could also use the thawing function of the Microwave for that matter, but I never go for this option.

TANDOORI PANEER

This is yet another simple and a quick recipe. You need paneer cubes, lemon juice, whole soaked Kashmiri Chili and Tandoori masala for this recipe. In case the store bought masala is not available at home you can use a mix of red Chili powder, coriander powder, chaat masala, garam masala, and cumin powder. You can either make a paste of the soaked Kashmiri chili and dried masalas as I have done here or can simply use the dried masala mixed with oil and lemon. If you have Kashmiri chili powder you can add a teaspoon of it to the dried masala, lemon and oil and use it as the marinade. Sharing here the method in which I made a wet paste of the chili and masala and ground it to smooth in a Mixie pot.

INGREDIENTS:

Paneer cubes: 250 gms

Kashmiri Red Chili: 2 no

Tandoori masala powder: 2 Tbsp

Lemon: 1/2

Olive oil: 1 Tbsp

Salt: To taste

Turmeric: 1 Tsp

Note: You can use any cooking oil of choice.

METHOD:

Soak the Kashmiri red chili in hot water, they are easier to grind after soaking as they become soft.

Preheat the oven to 200 deg C on the grill and oven setting.

Grind the Kashmiri chili along with the Tandoori masala powder, salt, lemon juice and some oil. Adding oil helps make a smooth paste and we can easily coat this paste on the paneer and keeps prevent paneer from drying up in the intense heat of the grill. Keep the marinated cubes in fridge for 30 min before grilling, you can avoid this if are in a hurry to eat. The marinated paneer cubes taste better if we allow the marinade to soak in.

ashus-Paneer cubes and the tandoori marinade.

Put the marinated paneer cubes in the preheated oven for 10- 15 minutes, tossing in between, so that all sides are grilled to perfection. The oven time depends upon the oven used at home, use self discretion, do not over grill the cubes as they toughen and then taste like rubber.

These paneer cubes were bit crisp on the outside and soft inside with the perfect blend of tandoori masalas, Yummy was my Jr’s comment!! 🙂

NOTE: In case you do not have a grill or oven at home, you can use a fry pan to cook the paneer. Heat the frying pan, add cooking oil of choice and put the marinated paneer cubes and cook on medium-to-slow flame, taking care not to burn them. Cook the cubes for only 10-15 min, turning/ tossing once so that both sides become crisp. Do not cook for long as the paneer will harden and become rubbery. (I have used smaller cubes and hence the time needed for grilling was less, and the grill/oven was already hot.)

SERVING: Serve the piping hot grilled paneer cubes with a mint yogurt chutney/dip. You can check out ashus Yogurt dip recipe in the Archives.

Check out other Tandoori recipes in the Archives.

Enjoy!

ashu

I know most of us are way too much fond of grilled baked food, I love tandoori food. I have been making a lot of tandoori veg and non-veg dishes at home as we all love it, but have posted very few of the recipes. I always wanted to make use of Gongura and prawns combination, Andhra recipes use this combination if I am not wrong, but had never tried. I absolutely love the Gongura leaves and as it is not a regularly seen leafy vegetable in supermarkets here, I always buy and prepare the Gongura chutney and store in the refrigerator. It is my pickle that I enjoy whenever I am eating a simple meal of dal and rice. Indian recipes give us a lot many options for making meals either very lavishly elaborate or as simple as a khichdi or rice and dal combos for days when one wants a light simple meal. For today’s tandoori menu I decided to make the Tandoori Gongura Prawns and yes, I loved it. My Jr. does not like the Gongura leaves so he choose not to eat even a single of this, but I had also made other tandoori prawns and he finished those. The tandoori prawns recipe will be my next post. The Gongura imparts such a tangy and unique taste to the sweetish prawns, those who love to experiment with their food will love the combination, and as I love it so I am gonna start making it more often.

Today lunch at my place was an assortment of tandoori dishes and can tell you how satisfying the lunch turned out to be. My Jr. had been asking me for sometime now to make some new type of dish from whole chicken breast meat. I used Italian herb mix and made a yummy baked dish, will be posting that recipe too. Then I made Tandoori Prawns too, the typical red colored spicy one, and they were so so Yum!!

Also baked and grilled some vegetables to go along with the chicken. I had fresh paneer cubes stored in the refrigerator, and marinated few of the cubes with my homemade tandoori masala and grilled it. So you can see I had a full tandoori platter as my lunch:). The weekend started out with masala tea with Karachi Bakery Cashew biscuits and a tandoori platter lunch and simple dal and rice with Gongura chutney as dinner. 🙂

Now to get started with making this recipe. We need the Gongura chutney for this recipe and few Kashmiri Chilies and Prawns that are cleaned and deveined. You can see my Gongura Chutney recipe here.

TANDOORI GONGURA PRAWNS

INGREDIENTS:

Gongura Chutney: 2 Tbsp

Kashmiri Red Chili: 3 no

Prawns/Shrimps: 250 gm

Olive oil: 2 tbsp

Turmeric: 1 Tsp

Salt: To taste

NOTE: You can use any cooking oil of choice.

METHOD:

Soak the Kashmiri red chili in hot water, they are easier to grind after soaking as they become soft.

Wash, devein, and clean the shrimps and pat dry with kitchen towel or tissue.

Apply salt and turmeric.

Preheat the oven to 200 deg C on the grill and oven setting.

Grind the Kashmiri chili along with the Gongura chutney and some oil. The chutney already had oil so you may only need 1 tbsp or less. Adding oil helps make a smooth paste and we can easily coat this paste on the shrimps. Oil does not make the shrimps dry when being grilled. Use remaining oil, if required, to brush on the prawns while they are being grilled.

Do remember that shrimps have delicate flesh and do not need a long time to be grilled, over grilling will result in burning and making them hard. Also do not keep them very close to the grill. The intense heat dries up the prawns. Hence adding oil to the marinade prevents the flesh from drying.

Line the skewers with the chutney marinated prawns and insert them in the oven for 10 mins. After 10 min. check if they are done, and if not crisp on the outside then keep for another 5 minutes and remove. They are perfectly done in 10-15 min, but depending upon the size and the grill oven used decide upon the grilling time.

Remove from the skewers and serve hot. The gongura chutney already imparts the tangy flavor and hence I did not need any sauce or dips along with these.

Serving Options:

You can serve it with a fresh salad of thinly sliced onions and tomatoes, seasoned with only salt and pepper. This is the classic salad accompaniment to any tandoori dish.
You can make a chutney infused olive oil dip as seen in the picture.
You can mix these with mixed salad and serve too.

For the other Tandoori recipes from ashuskitchen, click the link below: