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Cooking and Baking, Simply Cook

BBQ Tandoori Paneer

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We have been ordering Simply Cook meals for a few months now; you have to make sure that you have chosen your recipes a couple of weeks before they are delivered, otherwise you receive a random choice. This month, I think because we went away and had a busy few weeks, we forgot to choose our recipes, so we had the random pick. When we saw this recipe, BBA Tandoori Paneer, we weren’t too sure about it, mainly because it was a vegetarian dish and we do like our meat, but we shopped for the ingredients and this is how we got on…

The description from Simply Cook is:

Experience a much-loved Tandoori dish featuring the smoky, Punjabi spiced, juicy flavours that we all know and love, normally achieved by traditional clay-oven cooking (in a “tandoor”). We’ve managed to capture the essence of this mouth-watering delicious classic in our pots of flavour. No overnight marination required, just fire up the grill, pop open a refreshing drink and get ready for a taste of an Indian summer.

Ingredients

Ingredients

220g paneer cheese

70g natural yoghert

1 lemon

2 medium sweet potatoes
(cut into wedges)

1 small bag of salad

2 peppers of any colour
(cut into squares)

Store Cupboard

Vegetable oil

Simply Cook suggest you can swap paneer for halloumi, sweet potatoes for new potato wedges and peppers for courgettes or mushrooms. We didn’t swap anything, but we did add mushrooms.

How Did I Get On?

The first thing we had to do was prepare the sweet potato wedges, so they were cut up and then tossed in some oil and we sprinkled over the sweet potato seasoning. Then they were put in an oven which has been preheated to 200C and cooked for 20 minutes.

Next step was marinating the cheese, peppers and mushrooms – we mixed the Smoked Chili Blend with the Tandoori Paste in a large mixing bowl, added the yoghurt and half the lemon juice and mixed this altogether. Then the paneer, peppers and mushrooms and mixed it all to coat them.

We made up the kebabs by placing the cheese, peppers and mushrooms alternatively on the skewers. We put them in the oven and they cooked for 15 minutes. You can grill them on either side for 6-8 minutes instead, but we put them in the oven.

While the sweet potatoes and kebabs are cooking, we prepared the salad, dressing it with a little olive oil and we had a few extra salad items to put in.

We served the skewers with the salad on the side and made some mint dipping sauce.

Thoughts

If we were choosing our recipes for the month, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have chosen this dish, but I’m glad we tried it, it was very tasty and more filling than I thought it was going to be.

The preparation was pretty simple – there was a good tip on the recipe card that if you’re using wooden skewers to soak them first in water to stop them from burning.

I think we would do this dish again, but it probably wouldn’t be a regular with us as we like our meat too much!

If you would like to trial a four recipe box for a £1 then follow this link: https://simplycook.com/invite/Q85V36?via=app

tom kerridge, Uncategorized

Creamy butternut squash pasta bake

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fresh-start

I’ve never been fond of Macaroni Cheese, I’m not sure why, but this dish has never appealed to me, but after mooching through Tom Kerridge’s book, A Fresh Start, I saw this recipe for Creamy Butternut Squash pasta bake. I like butternut squash, so I thought I would give it a go.

Ingredients

ingredient-butternet

575 calories per serving

  • 1kg butternut squash, cut into chunks (about 2 cm)
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 500g macaroni
  • Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper

For the cheese sauce

  • 60g butter
  • 60g plain flour
  • 1 litre whole milk
  • 60g Parmesan, finely grated
  • 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

For the topping

  • A handful of sage leaves
  • 40g sun-blushed tomatoes, roughly chopped
  • 50g fresh breadcrumbs
  • 2 tbsp pumpkin oil (or use olive oil)
  • 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds

How did I get on?

The first thing that needed to be done was to cut the butternut squash into chunks. So for that, I called upon my husband, or rather my husband volunteered as he didn’t want to see me chop my fingers off!  Here’s how he got on:

After he had cut up the butternut squash, not quite as fast as in the video, we put it on a roasting tray, drizzled it with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, where it cooked on the top shelf for 25 minutes at 220ºC/Gas 7.

Once it was cooked and cooled, then comes my favourite part, you put three quarters into a blender and blitz it together.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the macaroni until al dente.

For the sauce, melt the better, add the floured stir for one minute. Then add the milk and whisk until it thickens slightly. Then add the Parmesan and nutmeg and stir until the cheese has melted. Grab your butternut squash puree and stir it through. That’s the most difficult part over with!

ready

Drain the macaroni, add to the sauce and stir well. Tip into a deep baking dish and scatter over the rest of the butternut squash, sage, sun-blushed tomatoes and breadcrumbs. Drizzle with the oil.

This is placed in the middle shelf of the one, turning on the oven grill at the same time (I have to admit, I forgot to do this!).

Bake for ten minutes and then take out and scatter the pumpkins seeds evenly over the surface and return to the oven for a further five minutes.

Thoughts

done
The finished dish

This dish was very tasty, a change from your normal macaroni cheese dish. It wasn’t hard to prepare, the most tricky bit being the sauce. There wasn’t much preparation apart from the butternut squash, so once you had prepared and roasted this, the rest didn’t take very long at all.

This makes enough for six people, so if that’s too much, you can freeze it and just defrost it and put it in the oven for about 30 minutes.