Idiot-proof vegetable pulao

August 26, 2014Aneela Mirchandani Rice, Sindhi food Tags: food, food blog, indian cuisine, indian food, indian food blog, pilaf, pulao, step by step vegetable pulao, vegan, vegetable pilaf, vegetable pulao, vegetarian 7 Comments

Vegetable pulao with tomato soup

One of the first dishes I ever tried cooking on my own was flavored rice cooked with a few vegetables. This is known as a vegetable pulao — or pilaf — or pulav, the standard-est and basic-est of Indian home recipes. So why has it taken me this long to blog about it?

Because sometimes the simplest things give you the most trouble. It has taken me years for me to get this right. Sometimes the rice isn’t cooked through. If it is, it is cooked too much. Or the vegetables are cut too big and raw on the inside, or they have turned to mush. If all goes right regarding the timing, the thing is tasteless. Gah.

One way to get around these problems is to cook the rice and vegetables separately then combine them. But while there are many perfectly fine recipes that rely on this method (many from the south — yogurt rice, lemon rice, tomato rice etc.), for vegetable pulao, the flavors must fuse, which means cooking together is a must. They must come out with a flourish, all perfectly done at the same time. They say each grain of rice must be separate, so add that to the list of requirements. It must be gently spiced, but not too much — too much would kick it over into being a biryani. That’s fine, but that’s not what we are after.

So now, finally, I present to you my pulao secrets, recently discovered after many years of trial and error, which should make all doubts vanish under the first whiff aroma that hits you when you open the pot. Here they are.

Secrets of pulao

Be stingy with the water. The vegetables you add will leave off some steam of their own, so I would use about a quarter less water than you would with plain rice.
But if you do that, the danger is that the rice will cook and expand and rise above the water line, leaving the upper layer uncooked. Curses! To get around this problem, we use a pressure cooker. (I believe a tightly closed dutch oven slow-cooked in an oven would work as well, but that is not what I did.)
Do not use vegetables that will turn to mush, like tomatoes or zucchini. The vegetables that you do use must be diced. I use vegetables like green beans, carrots, peas, cauliflower, cabbage, bell peppers, celery, etc.
Rice tends to be a bit bland, so you need to fire on all cylinders where the aromatics are concerned. So that means — garlic, ginger, green chilies, onion, and yogurt for richness.
Now this is the most important — do not caramelize the onions! Cook them till softened, but not browned. A lower flame would help. This is because what we are after is a savory flavor, not a sweet caramel browned flavor (there are other excellent rice dishes that explore this profile, we will go into that at some point).

Armed with these tenets we are ready to begin.

Rice soaking and vegetables diced

Ginger garlic chili paste with yogurt

Onion cooking with bay leaf and cardamom

Paste enters

Paste drying up

Vegetables enter

Rice enters

Done

Vegetable Pulao

Servings: 2
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Ingredients

1 cup long-grained rice
1.25 cup water
4 cups diced vegetables, mix of carrots, peas, beans, cauliflower (cut slightly larger, because it has the tendency to turn to mush if overcooked), bell pepper, celery, potatoes
1 black cardamom
1 bay leaf
1/3 cup diced onion (this will be about half a medium onion)
3-4 cloves garlic
1 inch piece ginger
1-3 fresh green chilies
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons oil

Method

Rinse and soak the rice for about half hour. Dice the vegetables — those that cook quickly (like cauliflower) can be left larger, those that cook slowly (like carrot) can be cut smaller. Blend the yogurt along with ginger, garlic and chilies to make a paste.

Heat oil in the pressure cooker or dutch oven on medium heat. When it shimmers, put in the cardamom and bay leaf. Let them cook until an aroma arises. Then put in the onion. It can cook for a few minutes until softened. Now put in the paste and stir to combine with the oil. In about five minutes of cooking, the paste will have dried up and the oil will show separating from the paste.

Now you can put the vegetables in, and simply toss them around to mix with the oil. Drain the rice and add that in as well, and stir to coat the rice with the oil and spices. Now put in the water and salt, and pressure cook for 15 minutes. If you are using a dutch oven, cover it tightly and cook it in the oven for about 20 minutes at 250ºF.

Let it sit covered for a few minutes after taking it off the heat. Before serving, fluff it up lightly with a fork.

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All about dals in one place

May 22, 2014May 22, 2014Aneela Mirchandani Dried legumes (beans and lentils), Uncategorized Tags: dal, dhal, food, food blog, frugal, indian cuisine, indian food, indian food blog, vegan, vegetarian 7 Comments

Apologies to anyone who might be expecting a fun and interesting new post about kitchen antics from me…instead what I have to offer today is a dry, pedantic review of some dals. I updated my page about dals, and I plan to keep adding to it with other dals I have not yet covered, and of course adding links to more dal recipes. This page is meant to be a one-stop-shop for all dal-related information on The Odd Pantry. Dull, yes, but someone has to do it.

Check it out.

I love you, Alemany Farmer’s Market! Plus: what one does with Bitter Melon Greens

April 22, 2014April 22, 2014Aneela Mirchandani Greens Tags: alemany farmers market, food, Food Blogs, how to cook bitter melon greens, how to cook karela leaves, indian cuisine, indian food, indian food blog, indian recipes, Recipes, vegetarian 9 Comments

Bitter melon greens with paneer

I do so love you, Alemany Farmer’s Market! I love all the other farmer’s markets too but you are soooo special.

I have found that there are two types of farmer’s markets in the Bay Area. There are farmer’s MARKETS and then there are FARMER’S markets. The former are a lot about marketing. They sell produce, sure, but a lot of it is overpriced, and more than half the stalls are filled with high-profit-margin goods like infused oils in precious glass bottles. I can do that for free at home in an emptied jam jar and no preciousness.

Alemany Farmer’s Market (Copyright: Kurt Rogers, The Chronicle)

But Alemany farmer’s market, you truly are a FARMER’S market. I love you because you tickle my fancy every time I visit. Where else can I find corn that is blue and smaller than my palm and sticky. Where else can I find a fleshy, hairy stalk that is labeled ‘wild potato’ (even Google flopped on that one). Where else would I see tiny blotchy eggs that were apparently laid by a quail. Where else would I find a prickly pink egg, and not only giant taro with their purple stem still attached but also taro leaves. Where else can I find not one, not two, but three or four choy-related greens.

And no matter how strange and unfamiliar the sight I see, there’s always a crowd of customers expertly assessing, holding, pressing, rifling through the produce. There I stand, mystified, in awe, only to be elbowed aside by a little old lady with her cloth bag who has zeroed in on the unnamed leaves and is tossing aside the rotten ones and snagging the good ones. She is gone before I can gasp — excuse me, lady, can you save some for me, and by the way, what on earth is it?

In this farmer’s market, advice abounds. As soon as I pick up a fruit or vegetable and stand there regarding it, someone or the other’s voice will speak up beside me — you chop it, you fry it with garlic. Or boil it with chicken. Or what have you. More often than not, the English is broken and heavily accented and the accents could come from any part of the world from Africa to Vietnam. If San Francisco is a microcosm, then Alemany Farmer’s Market is a micro-micro-cosm. Or a micro-cosm-cosm? Something like that.

Best of all is when this market reintroduces me to some childhood friends that I didn’t at first recognize. The other day this happened to me twice. First I see these pretty round leaves tied in a bunch. The person at the stall informs me that they are moringa leaves, grown all over the world from Africa to the Himalayas to South-east Asia, a miracle vegetable that can cure all sorts of ailments. Sounds familiar, but what is it? Hold that thought…a post on that will come next.

Bitter melon greens

Next I see a stall with these simply humungus bunches of bright green leaves with tendrils sticking out all over. Turns out these are leaves from the bitter melon plant — bitter gourd, karela, call it what you will. Well. That is an old friend and I love it. I have cooked with it many times. But I didn’t know that the leaves were edible too.

Bitter melon greens with paneer

Turns out they are, down to the stems. They are certainly bitter though, so I tried cooking them with something creamy to smooth out the bitterness. I used ghee and paneer.

The other thing about this recipe is that it is more of a mindset rather than a fixed set of steps. If you don’t have paneer, you might substitute with ricotta. If you don’t have the bitter melon greens, either dandelion greens, radicchio or frisée would be a great replacement. Out of the spices used, if you don’t have one, just leave it out, although of course the character of the dish will morph. The cumin seeds in particular, I would try not to leave out. Heat can come from any source like the cracked red pepper that the Italians use. Ghee of course, can be replaced with butter. Mmm…now I can’t wait to try this completely new recipe with all the replacements made! Here are pictures of the process.

Slicing the greens

Other ingredients: paneer, onion, garlic, chili, cumin

Frying garlic, chili, onion

Paneer goes in

Powdered spices go in

Stir to coat

Greens go in

Done

Bitter melon greens with paneer

Servings: 4
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Ingredients

1/2 pound paneer
Half a bunch bitter melon greens
1 large shallot or half a medium onion, chopped fine
4-5 cloves garlic, sliced
1-3 serrano chilies, sliced
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder (optional)
1 tablespoon ghee

Method

Rinse and slice the greens. The finer you slice the greens the better the final result. I ultimately didn’t get it super fine but I did try to ensure no stem was longer than half an inch. Dice the paneer into little blocks about 1/4 inch on each side. Finely chop the shallot, garlic and chilies.

Heat the ghee in a wide pan on medium heat. When it is shimmering, put in the cumin seeds. They will presently sizzle, then in goes the garlic and chilies. Let them get a little shriveled (couple minutes) and put in the onion. The onion only needs to cook until pink and translucent, not browned.

Put in paneer at this point, along with the dry masalas (turmeric powder, red chili powder and salt). Stir to combine. Greens go in next. Toss with paneer and spices. Then don’t need to cook for long. When they look shrunk down and shiny, add about half a cup of hot water, cover and cook on low for just about 4 minutes and you are done.

This goes well with chapatis/rotis or rice.

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A slab of bread rolls — laadi pav

April 20, 2014March 1, 2019Aneela Mirchandani Aside Risen breads, Street food and chaat Tags: bombay street food, food, homemade bread, homemade rolls, how to make laadi pav, how to make pav, indian cuisine, indian food, indian recipes, mumbai street food, Recipes, vegetarian 11 Comments

Pav

Most people are only dimly aware of this but the Portuguese colonized India long before the British, and hung on till long after. Because of their influence, a particular yeasted bread called pav spread all around Bombay and became very much part of the culture of the city. (A word on that shortly.) Now pão in Portuguese simply means ‘bread’. In India, we have a pretty fraught relationship with yeast breads, as in, we didn’t get around to rising breads much. Most of the use of wheat flour is for flat breads. It’s not that risen breads are not popular in India — they are, very much so. But they come from the European influence, and have always remained a bit foreign. By that I mean that hardly anyone makes risen breads at home. When I was a kid, if one wanted pav, one had to resort to bakeries.

Irani restaurants

By iranichaimumbai (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

In the old days, most of the bakeries in Bombay were run by the Iranis, as part of tea-houses called Irani restaurants. They were pretty unique establishments, run by Zoroastrians who escaped Iran around the 1920’s. For me, it is impossible to think back to any neighborhood in South Bombay without thinking of the corner Irani restaurant that served it. The Iranis were foreigners and the rigid customs of Hinduism meant nothing to them. The food they served was mostly Irani cuisine but also had a touch of Europe.

Their clientele looked like the city itself. There were Christians and Parsees, taxi drivers and street workers, middle-class office workers and retirees. For a few rupees you could hang out for hours under the high ceilings, the drone of the fan overhead, read the morning newspaper that was still warm from the press, sit on the wooden colonial-style netted chairs at glass-topped tables in peace while you ate your breakfast.

Pav bread in Irani bakery
(photo credit: http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/irani/cafe.htm)

They were not fancy. Customer service was a bit…brusque. This post has an entertaining story about that. Tea inevitably got poured into the saucer to be drunk. Breakfast was variations on pav. Maska pav is bread and butter. Brun maska pav is hard brown bread with butter. Akuri pav is pav bread with scrambled eggs. And so on.

If you want to further explore the old world of Irani restaurants, here are some websites with pictures and wonderful stories. The Heritage Institute page on it, and one from a website called Irani Chai.

Street food

The Irani restaurants are sadly on their way out. Many have turned into beer bars, one into a McDonalds. If they are around, they have survived by expanding their menus to include dosas and Chinese. But pav bread remains as popular in the city as ever. It fuels much of the manual labor that goes on in the city from the early hours to way past midnight.

I guess this is the appropriate time in this post for me to start referring to the city as Mumbai. People say that no one starves in Mumbai. To eat a decent, wholesome meal, you don’t need to own a kitchen or a stove or even own a pair of shoes. Every street corner has some food stall or the other. Many serve meals centered on pav. Plates and cutlery are completely unnecessary. Food is simply handed to you or may be wrapped in a newspaper.

Vada pav stall from http://inner–space.blogspot.com

One is vada pav, which is mashed potato deep-fried in a besan batter, served inside a pav, with garlic chutney. Another is pav bhaji, which is a mashed mixture served with pav with tons of butter. For 50 rupees you can fill your belly with an excellent, pure vegetarian, wonderfully-spiced meal. People, please realize how wonderful this is. The Odd Pantry will showcase all of those recipes eventually.

But one has to start with pav.

Laadi pav

The particular version of Portuguese pão that we in India latched onto looks like a grid of bread buns stuck together at the edges into a slab (‘laadi’). To me the word ‘laadi’ sounds a bit mechanical or construction-related, so it is quite endearing when it is used for bread. Looks a lot like a dinner roll that is available all over America.

But look, this is different. I’ve tried to recreate my favorite street food snacks at home using a standard dinner roll, but the results are terribly disappointing. This is because store-bought dinner rolls have more than a hint of sweetness and that simply does not go with the savory flavors of street food. It totally ruins it, in fact. They often don’t use real butter and one absolutely needs real butter.

This recipe of pav has no sugar whatsoever. None. You don’t need any. And real butter. Just try it.

Flour and yeast

Pour water in and stir

Shaggy mass

Shaggy mass with butter poured on

Pav dough

Divided dough

Further divided dough

Pav rising

Pav risen

Laadi pav

Servings: 12 buns
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Ingredients

3 cups bread flour (I used King Arthur, substitute with all purpose or maida in India)
1 teaspoon instant yeast. This is also available in most stores as bread machine yeast.
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Method

Have the flour in a large bowl. Sprinkle in the yeast and stir it in. Then sprinkle in the salt and stir that in. Add 1.25 cups room temperature water and gently stir to moisten all the flour and make a shaggy mass. Cover and go do something else for 15-20 minutes.

Melt the butter — I use the microwave for this. But make sure it is not sizzling, it needs to be just melted. Pour the butter over the flour mixture. Now give it a good kneading, for about 5-7 minutes. The dough will be smooth and shiny.

Cover with plastic wrap and leave it aside at room temperature to rise for 1.5-2 hours. My room temperature is around 70°F. In India, room temperature will be a lot higher, so I would leave it under a fan or airy window.

In 1.5-2 hours, it will have doubled. Gently take the dough out, and using a pastry cutter, divide it into 12 rolls. The way I do this is to first divide in half, then each of those into halves to make 4 quarters, and each of those into 3 to make 12.

Each roll must be shaped like this: take the dough in hand and start by rolling it into a pouch, press down the center point with your thumbs and keep rolling more and more of the bun into the pouch. You are sort of trying to make a stretched balloon with the outer surface. Pinch the seam of the pouch shut. Cover with oil and lay seam-side down on a cookie sheet. Each roll is to be place half inch away from its neighbors in a grid.

Let it rise for another hour. The rolls will have risen into each other and gotten connected. Bake in a 425°F oven for 15 minutes. If you like, brush with butter right away when they come out.

A meditation on tempering and a good-tempered moong dal

February 5, 2014Aneela Mirchandani Basic methods, Mung beans (moong dal) Tags: dal, food, indian cuisine, indian food, indian recipes, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian 17 Comments

Very little meat is eaten in India; many families are entirely vegetarian, but even the others (like mine) hardly got around to buying meat for the dinner table once or twice a month. I have met a lot of people in the United States who find that hard to believe. In this country all three meals are sometimes centered around meat. In addition to forming the main course, meat products are used to flavor the food: whether it is the use of chicken broth, or bacon cooked into the sauce base or thrown on salad, or ham hocks as a base for tough greens like collards.

Many modern cooks here are learning to leave aside the bacon in favor of aromatics like onion and garlic. In my mother-in-law’s generation people were a little afraid of these ‘strong’ and ‘aggressive’ flavors; nowadays, they generally lead to a flurry of swooning.

But what if you were to leave out the meat, leave out the eggs, then in a fit of pique throw out the onions and garlic too?

What would food taste like then? Is one supposed to develop a taste for grass? Well it turns out that this type of cuisine is one of the most flavorful in the world. Jain food, which is pretty much synonymous with the Sattvic or ‘pure’ food of Hinduism, leaves out any foods that might cause harm to other creatures; clearly this is an extremely high bar, but in practice, that means no meat, eggs, fish, onions or garlic.

That still leaves the wide world of vegetables (including my beloved cauliflower), all kinds of lentils (dals), grains from wheat and rice to millet and sorghum, the nutty fragrance of ghee, and of course what India is famous for, which is spices.

Tempering

My personal opinion — the ingredients are great and all. But really what sets apart Sattvic cuisine and Indian cuisine in general is the technique of tempering. Known by various names — tadka, chhaunk, bhagaar or vaghaar — this is the method of heating fat and throwing in whole spices until they release their essential oils.

Most non-Indian people ask me if I grind my own spice mixtures for Indian food. The answer is yes, I do. But for most everyday food, I don’t need to — because I just use them whole while tempering.

This is the basic process of tempering. Heat oil or ghee in a thick-bottomed small pan. When it shimmers (in case of ghee it should completely melt and a fragrance arise) the spices are put in. There is a certain sequence to the introduction of spices to the oil. There is, I admit, a bit of magic to this. Asafetida, if it is used, usually goes in first. Dry red chilies, if used, go in next. Mustard seeds (for me) usually go in last because they will pop with a vengeance. In between come the other whole seeds. Then in go the aromatic vegetables, such as garlic, ginger, chilies, onion, if any, that the recipe demands.

Tempering can be the first step of the recipe. Or it could be the last, as in the one below. The tempered oil is poured over the completed dish and stirred in.

Now spices are great even if you prepare them in the more well-known way — which is to grind them up into a mixture. I’m not going to run this method down (a classic of many cuisines, including Indian) but here is the difference from the tempering method. When you grind the spices, you are pulverizing every bit of them into the food. This includes the essential oils but also the fibrous seed-coating and other parts. Yes, there is a bit of the cardboard taste in most of the fibers. When you have a strongly flavored meal with onions or meat and so forth, you don’t notice this powderiness. But in a delicately flavored dish where the highlight is a lentil or a vegetable, the ideal method is to draw out the spice flavor into fat, leave the seeds whole where they add a bit of crunch, leaving the tastes pure.

And if you think about it, purity is what the Sattvic type of food is centered on.

Moong dal tempered with whole spices

This dish uses a mix of the dehusked (yellow) moong dal and the split but skin on (green) moong dal. Moong dal, of course, is a synonym of mung bean. It is one of the fastest cooking dals and needs no pre-soaking. This makes enough for a dinner for two.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup moong dal split and dehusked
1/4 cup moong dal split but with skin on
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon asafetida (hing)
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
1/4 teaspoon ajwain (carom) seeds
1 teaspoon cumin (jeera) seeds
1 teaspoon black mustard (rai) seeds
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons oil
2 cups water
For garnish: dry mango powder or lemon juice, more red chili powder, minced cilantro.

Method:

Rinse and drain the mix of dals in plenty of water. Put the dal in a pot along with 2 cups water and the turmeric. Bring it to a boil with the lid off; once it foams up heartily you can lower the heat to a simmer, partially cover with a lid and leave it for 35 to 45 minutes. At this point it should be softened. Add the salt.

Heat the oil in a thick-bottomed pan. When it shimmers add the asafetida and the red chili powder; when they foam add the cumin and the carom seeds; when they sizzle add the mustard seeds; when they pop turn off the heat and pour the oil into the dal.

Stir and taste for salt. At this point your dal is ready, all that is left is the garnish. I have suggested some but feel free to experiment!

Exercise your right to choose — the chili

January 4, 2014January 4, 2014Aneela Mirchandani Peppers, Tomatoes Tags: food, indian cuisine, indian food, indian recipes, Recipes, vegetarian 8 Comments

There there, I know what ails you. You love the smoky flavor of dried red chilies, but their heat makes you run for the jug of water. It may also give you the runs. You curse the American continent for inventing these pods of TNT. You wish that you could turn into a bird, not so that you could then fly, oh so free! — but because then you would lack the pain receptors for capsaicin that you share with other mammals.

Don’t worry, I understand! You can cry on the shoulders of Aunt Odd Pantry.

Chili pods drying

And still, the flavor of chilies haunts you! How to get one without the other? There is a way! You see, just like some countries invest heavily in defense (like my home, the United States), while others have to expend so much energy to just survive in the desert that they don’t have much left over for defense (like Dubai in the UAE), chilies come in two styles as well. Chilies that grow in wetter climates, where their sworn enemy (the fungus Fusarium semitectum) grows easily, invest a lot in defense and become hotter. While chilies that grow in drought conditions have to be more judicious in how much heat they develop. The arch enemy — the fungus — is less of a problem in drought anyway, because it needs wetness too.

The hottest chilies in the world are the bhoot jholokia from Nagaland, India and the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion — both come from very wet climates.

But then there is the panoply of larger, not-hot chili peppers — the pasilla, the Kashmiri, the ancho — that can be added to the mix to add flavor and color but not the heat. They thought of everything.

Anaheim Chilies from About Mexican Food

This dish in particular is based around that smoky flavor of chilies. Tomatoes and garlic play a supporting role. Yogurt is used to moderate the taste further. Like several of my other recipes, this is a gravy that one can throw anything into. It goes very well over rice, or with chapatis, or dosas, for that matter.

The recipe below makes enough for about 6 people.

Chili-tomato gravy

Ingredients:

A few big, mild chilies — I used 4 Kashmiri
A few small, hot chilies — I used 5 cayenne
8 cloves garlic
Quarter cup cilantro — I used some thick stems I had left over
3 medium tomatoes
1/3 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons oil
Half a teaspoon turmeric
1.5 teaspoon salt

Method:

This proportion of mild to hot chilies gave me a pretty hot gravy. Feel free to use a different proportion, from no hot chilies at all to all hot chilies. You better know what you are doing if you choose the latter.

Heat a roasting pan on medium-high and place the dry chilies on it for a few minutes until they darken. Remove them to cool for a few minutes. When they are cool enough to handle, you can destem and deseed them. Grind them to a fine powder in a clean coffee grinder.

Make a paste of garlic, cilantro and chili powder, adding as little water as you can get away with.

Heat the oil in a thick-bottomed pot. When it shimmers put in the paste. Stir and let it cook until it darkens, on medium heat. Soon you will see the oil shimmering and the paste will seem drier and yet shinier. Then you know it is done.

Now whip up the yogurt and swirl it in. Stir and let that cook as well. In a few minutes, it will have properly merged with the paste and become homogeneous. Now it is time to put in the roughly chopped tomatoes.

At this point the paste is probably so liquid that you can raise the heat to highish. Let the tomatoes liquefy and boil off mostly. Add the turmeric and the salt. At this point, the basic gravy is done.

Add anywhere from a half cup to one-and-half cup of water to allow it to boil for a few minutes; also, by controlling the amount of water you are controlling what sort of dish you want it to be. If you plan to add some potatoes to it and have it over rice, for instance, you could make it more liquid, because potatoes will have their own thickening starch. If you plan to add chicken bite-sized pieces, and want a drier sauce around it, you can skip the water entirely — the chicken will let out some of its own liquid.

As you might have guessed, now is the time to make a dish out of it by adding whatever things you want to this sauce. Care must be taken to make sure that whatever you add will have similar cooking times. One trick is to precook the vegetables in a microwave and then add it in to blend.

Here are some ideas:

Chicken breast cut up with cilantro garnish
The ever-popular paneer blocks with peas
A combination of small cut up vegetables: carrots, peas, cauliflower, bell peppers, french beans, potatoes, raisins.
Fillet of strong-flavored fish, covered with the sauce, and simmered until done

This is what I did with it — paneer and peas.