Indian restaurant paneer makhani is next level comfort food…creamy tomato sauce, mild spice in the background and pillowy cubes of chewy paneer. It’s not surprising that paneer makhani has become Surya’s go to Indian food.

Of course, this means that any paneer makhani that I make at home has very strong competition to measure up to restaurant paneer makhani. Like most 9 year olds (happy birthday to my newly minted 9 yo!), she’s not persuaded by  my rationale argument that my recipe doesn’t call for heavy cream and loads of butter.

But this version of paneer makhani has elicited a “restaurant worthy” response from the family. It uses a cashew sauce for creaminess. My original recipe calls for almond butter or cashew butter plus yogurt to get that creamy consistency. Both are winners but this version is tops in our house for right now.

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Removing the skins from the tomatoes is another key step to achieving a smooth, restaurant style sauce. It also helps to bring out the juices in tomatoes which is great if you have a few less than plump, red tomatoes on hand.

To skin tomatoes, you simply cut an “X” into the bottom of the tomato like shown above. You only need to go an inch or so deep, not all the way through. Drop the tomatoes into boiling water for a few minutes until the skins start to peel. Take them out and place in a colander then run cold water over them. When they are cool enough to handle, the skins slips right off.

You can easily substitute tofu, seitan or chicken for the paneer in this dish. Chickpeas would also work well.

Let’s talk about paneer for a minute because I get a lot of questions on this front.

Do I make my own paneer? I generally do not make my own paneer sheerly out of a lack of time and pre-planning. Also, it take a lot of milk to make not a lot of paneer.

Where can I buy paneer? You can find paneer at any Indian grocery store. I recommend buying it from the refrigerated section rather than frozen section if possible because it is softer when it has not been frozen.

What brand of paneer do you buy? I used to buy Nanak brand paneer, but more recently I have found that Swad brand paneer is softer and tastes fresher. It has a long shelf life so I buy a few packages and keep them in the refrigerator. If the paneer does not feel fresh and soft when I take it out of the package, I cut it then drop it into a pot of boiling water for 3-5 minutes.

Do I have to fry the paneer? I often am asked if the paneer needs to be fried before putting it into the curry. While I do fry it for some curries, I find that it is not needed for this thick, rich tomato sauce. So I cube it up and drop it right into the sauce. See above for my note about putting it into boiling water to soften it up if needed.

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It sounds a little over the top but when you really think about it, it’s very practical. The number of times I’ve found myself thinking, “If only I had another Instapot, right now I could start the…” But it would probably take relocating to the suburbs to gain enough storage space so we’re a one Instapot only household.

I’ve really been loving 101 Cookbook’s Instapot recipes. While I was making her Brown Rice Turmeric Congee, I prepped all of the ingredients for My Heart Beet’s Indian Onion Masala.

I went a little over the top and also made these spicy green beans from Dakshin Vegetarian Cuisine from South India. The title is pretty self-explanatory. It took me about a year since my dad gave it to me for me to get over my fear of cooking South Indian food. More to come on that front.

Onion-ginger-garlic-tomato masala forms the base of many North Indian curries. A few weeks ago, I made a vat of it in my Instapot and froze it in a silicone muffin tray.

I’ve used it to make Paneer Makhani, Yellow Split Pea Lentils (Toor Daal) and Spinach with Chickpeas. It reduces cooking time to under 20 minutes.

Have you ever made a dish once, had it turn out perfect and then made it again following the same steps with still good – but not great – results? Sometimes I chalk this up to kitchen karma. But really it may be the quality of the ingredients you’re using. When I was recipe testing this paneer makhani recipe, on one trip to the market I found really juicy, richly red and ripe tomatoes.  Another time, I remember being disappointed that the tomatoes weren’t so juicy and red but still seemed okay. I didn’t think much about it. The paneer makhani still turned out really delicious – creamy, a little tangy, spicy and sweet – but it required a few more “to taste” tweaks at the end and I knew it wasn’t as good as the prior version.

So if you can help it, buy the juiciest, ripest tomatoes you can find when cooking Indian food – it will make a difference.

I also peel the tomatoes to get rid of the skins for the paneer makhani curry. Removing the skins creates a really smooth puree and in turn a beautiful, elegant curry sauce that looks restaurant-like. I remember reading this post from Purple Food two years ago and being reluctant to peel tomatoes. Now I’m a believer and do it for dishes where tomatoes are the main ingredient of the sauce.

Here’s how to easily peel a tomato:

1. Use a paring knife to score each tomato with an X on the bottom. Keep a bowl of cold/ice water on hand.

2. Drop into a pot of boiling water for about 30 seconds to 1 minute.

3. Remove to the ice bath and once the skin has started to peel and the tomatoes are cooled, you can easily peel the skin off with your hands.

Do you ever come back from vacation with memories of a dish that you ate during your trip and then try to recreate it at home?  I have at least 3 dishes from our last trip that I’m trying to deconstruct and recreate.

Sometimes it can be cumbersome to vacation as a strict vegetarian, but on occasion, when you have chefs who really embrace the challenge, it’s a lot of fun.  During a recent trip to the Virgin Islands, the chefs at our hotel, Little Dix Bay in Virgin Gorda, treated us to a four day culinary adventure in their efforts to accommodate our vegetarian diet.  Among their creations was an appetizer of an open face warmed tomato topped with a spicy Trinidadian curry and set atop a bed of fresh arugula.  The tomato was explosively juicy and the arugula a fresh, tempering to the fiery, yellow curry.  

After dinner, when the chef came out to ask how we enjoyed the meal (though our licked clean plates must have been a good clue), we told him how tasty yet simple the tomato salad had been.  I tried more than a few times to get the curry recipe out of him.  He didn’t budge.  I thought maybe it was due to a language barrier, so I tried again, this time guessing at a few of the spices.  I only got him to confirm that the curry was yogurt based, incorporated turmeric and chili powder and was Trinidadian.

Back home in New York, some obsessive google searching brought me to a few different recipes for Trinidadian curry spice blends.  This is one of the few times I’ve made my own spice blend.  It requires an up front time commitment if you decide to use seeds, which need to be ground.  It was worth it though because I got to use up a lot of my “seed” spices and, even if you just blend powdered spices, your curry powder is arguably fresher than store bought packaged curry powder.  I also like being able to taste a little pinch of the blend at the end and adjust it for spice and heat per my liking.

That being said, I won’t judge you if you don’t want to blend your own spices.  Just substitute curry powder!

I used this recipe to make my Trinidadian Spice Mix. It makes enough to fill a small jar, so you’ll have plenty leftover.  I omitted the star anise because I didn’t have any and didn’t want to add yet another ingredient to my spice cabinet.

Tangy, spicy heat massaging my vocal cords.  Roasted mustard seeds, cumin, garlic and pepper steaming towards my nose.  Each maintaining a soft cadence under direction of the nutty paste of toor dhal.  Filling my belly.  Warming my throat.  Reviving my olfactory senses.  Cold cold go away.  Please don’t come back another day.

R and I were not only lucky enough to have avoided the Northeast’s recent winter storms, but we also managed to be spending that time exploring Costa Rica’s warm beaches and monkey and sloth filled rainforests.  After ten days of sand and adventure, however, it took only 12 hours of being stateside for a nasty cold to infiltrate my sun kissed, post-vacation high.  Merry x-mas me.

I convinced R that if he wanted to get me back in shape, he had to feed my cold like my dad would – by making a steaming bowl of Tomato Garlic Rasam.  It was a little surreal to sit in the kitchen and relax, giving R instructions and watching him sort through my masala rack and pans.  Surreal but well worth it.  Especially since once once you learn, you can’t un-learn (moihaha).

Updated: For those who didn’t grow up eating rasam nightly, rasam is a South Indian tomato soup that is also called chaaru, char or saaru…if you were in a South Indian restaurant, it would likely be served as an appetizer and described as a “spicy tomato and lentil soup.”  There are a number of different variations.  You can also entirely omit the toor dhal for a more liquidy, quicker version.