Recycling something that didn’t go well on my taste-buds

Like any other art form cooking has its own share of disasters, it is natural as the artists are human beings, who are beautifully imperfect. So, talking about such a cooking disaster let me rewind a week earlier. It was my   brother’s Upanayan ceremony(holy thread ceremony), as societal mores dictated we had to organise a reception to mark the day after which he could partake non-vegetarian food (which includes onion and masoor dal as well).

One of the items on the menu was a ‘sorse paneer’(cottage cheese cubes in mustard sauce) , it was brilliantly disastrous as the mustard was undercooked. Imagine 800 gms of paneer wasted just because the cook thought that ‘people would prefer eating fish, so never mind that humble paneer’.

I am used to recycling bad food, it is something I had to learn owing to the hazards that usually occur  when one is living away from home and hearth. But let me delve into the crux of the matter the Bhattacharjee’s as a rule prefer mustard in their fish and not in their paneer, and on top of that Papa Bhattacharjee doesn’t eat paneer! So, after a few minutes of brainstorming( while carefully examining the disaster in question) I decided to make something which looked like a plebeian  relative of the Shahi Paneer.

The disastrous Sorse Paneer

I am not sure of this impromptu recipe, if you want to try it, I would suggest you make a few additions of your own.
 Here it goes :

WARNING: This so called recipe should not be read by people who do not know that to heat oil in a pan you have to put oil and before that light the gas. (There was one girl who asked me whether onions can be fried in unheated oil!)

Tentative ingredients:

1.       Potatoes for Papa Bhattacharjee: Which were boiled, peeled and fried. Of course cut it into halves before boiling them.

2.       A paste of poppy seeds and onions (separately); I did this after having look at the amount of paneer. *Always trust your instinct it is your best friend in the kitchen.

3.       Ground little bit of dry roasted garam masala and black pepper. (We have this fantastic mini-hand pestle at Tezpur,it is better than any machine grinder.)

Poppy seed paste(below) and onion paste(above)

Garam masala and black pepper powdered in a hand pestle

Cooking time: 15 minutes or more (frankly speaking I don’t remember).

How I did it:
I fried the potatoes, kept them aside and didn’t eat them, no matter how hungry I was!

Naturally I had to heat oil, in this case, white oil in a deep bottomed pan. Then I fried the onion paste till it had that lovely lilac colour ( yes, lilac and not pink as Sanjeev Kapoor says).If you do not have nasal congestion you will get that lovely smell…wow!

After this, I put the delicate poppy seed paste into the pan, fried it together till my common sense told me to stop( *also taste it and trust your taste-buds). Then I put the segregated paneer, i.e. the paneer which was separated from the undercooked mustard paste.

 I did not wash off the mustard totally kept some of it, as the colour suggests

 But I also made sure that some amount of the mustard was still clinging on to the paneer.
At some point of time I also put in the fried potatoes.

Got hold of two small cups of milk. Oh! Yes milk oops forgot to mention it above, anyway it’s an impromptu recipe forgive my unmindfulness. After that I poured in the milk and let it simmer till the gravy thickened to my liking.                                     

* Optional: For corrupted East Bengalis like myself you can put some sugar to balance the taste.

At last I put the ground garam masala-black pepper powder and mixed it well.

We had it with rice in the afternoon and with paranthas at night; tasted good both ways.

PS: I might have missed a few steps but I hope that you don’t have to try it out, because seriously folks undercooked mustard paneer is one pain in the ‘you-know-where’.

Served hot! My favourite cook- my mom gave me full marks for this