Taste & Create: Punjabi Home Style Paneer Curry

I have had a potentially life altering revelation today. Well, life altering for me, anyway. It all started with my Taste & Create partner, Simran from Bombay Foodie. We have been paired before but this was no disappointment because I love her blog and I love the food she makes. After a short time skimming her pages, I found a paneer curry, and remembered that I actually had real paneer in my freezer for once and so my choice was made.


The recipe calls for 2 tomatoes--normally, in the past, I have used canned tomatoes. Very high quality canned tomatoes, the same ones that have worked successfully for me in many other recipes. But today, I had just picked my first gigantic heirloom tomato (my mom sent me the plants so I have no idea which breed exactly) and I thought to myself well it is probably always tomato season in India, so even though I think of curries as made with canned tomatoes maybe I should give fresh a try. Gorgeous just picked heirloom fresh, no less.


I gave myself several hours to make the Punjabi Home Style Paneer Curry--which when you look at the recipe you will realize is kind of insane. But here is the thing, in the past I have attempted allegedly simple Indian curries (tomato-based) and found they required much longer simmering than the recipe claimed to get rid of the overly acidic tomato taste.

Apparently that taste was caused by using canned tomatoes.


I am mortified to confess that while I have always accepted the vast superiority of fresh picked tomatoes raw, I have never really believed that it would make much difference in a well-cooked sauce. Oh when I am wrong I am sometimes really wrong.


This was amazing. Barely any work and done in about 45 minutes. It has left me with a terrible dilemma now though--would frozen tomatoes suffice (frozen right after picking, I mean) to use the rest of the year? Should I make a whole bunch of curries and freeze them all? I cannot go back to the canned taste, not after this.


My only change was to add peas and sprinkle salt on the onions while cooking to release their water. I used one super huge heirloom tomato and then supplemented with 2 quite small zebra tomatoes, all from my garden (wish I had taken their pictures now). The zebra tomatoes account for the less red nature of the curry, since they are yellow/green when ripe. I did not peel but instead just processed the tomatoes with my immersion blender in its jar. My onions were medium to big. As always, I used a paprika chili powder to eliminate heat issues for my kids and served with cayenne pepper for John.