Spinach Broccoli Saag with Cottage Cheese

Dear Friends,

I have to admit…when it comes to cooking I set my own rules. I always try to add new ingredient or new flavour to my food. Most of the time I succeed but sometime I do fail :(. I am a big fan of cooking something healthy for my family and I love to preserve the natural colour of the ingredients I use. When I cook using spinach, I am very careful to keep the green when dish is ready. I am also bit lazy so I don’t like to cook food which takes forever to finish…sorry I don’t have that patience. That’s why you will notice many of my recipes are done in <15 minutes.

About this dish…we all know spinach and broccoli are very high in iron. I make palak paneer very often but this time I decided to add broccoli with it. The colour and the flavour of this dish are amazing as I said I am very careful to preserve the natural colour. I also made few changes to make this curry more flavourful. This curry can be eaten with roti, naan or paratha and rice. This recipe serves around 4 people.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

1 bunch of spinach/palak
1 broccoli head
1 big onion
4-5 cloves of garlic
2-3 green chilies or as per your taste
1 tbsp lemon juice
200 gm paneer/Indian cottage cheese
1 tsp cumin seeds
Oil for cooking
Salt to taste

Spices
7-8 cloves
1-2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp coriander seeds

Procedure
1. Dry roast all the spices in a pan until flavours fills up your house, it will take about 2-3 minutes on low to medium heat. 2. Make 1 cm cubes of paneer/cottage cheese. In a non stick pan, heat 1 tbsp oil. When oil is slight hot saute paneer from all sides on a medium heat. When ready, soak sautéed paneer in warm water and keep on side.

3. Wash spinach thoroughly, separate broccoli heads and cut onion in big pieces. In a big pot, heat water, add onion pieces and boil on medium for 2 minutes. Then add spinach and broccoli and boil for another minute. Turn off the heat and removed all vegetables from hot water and immediately soak in cold water to stop the cooking process.

4. In a blender, add boiled spinach, broccoli and onion but remember to squeeze out all the water before adding to blender. Also add roasted spices, garlic cloves, green chilies, lemon juice and blend to a smooth paste.

5. In a pan heat 2 tbsp oil, add 1 tsp cumin seeds. When cumin seeds are sautéed, lower the heat and add spinach paste and salt, simmer for 2-3 minutes on low heat. Squeeze water from paneer and add to the gravy and simmer for another minute or two. Cover the pan and turn off the heat. You don’t need to cook this dish for long because spinach and broccoli are already blanched and it will lose the green colour if cooked longer. Tip: If you don’t like the strong garlic flavour in the dish, you can boil garlic with onion.
6. Serve this dark green spinach broccoli paneer curry when it is hot, try not to reheat as it looses colour every time you reheat. It can be served with naan/roti and rice. It is delicious 😛 , a strong flavour of roasted freshly ground spices and garlic makes it very flavourful. It is super healthy too 🙂 …win win 😉 😉 .