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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

Simply Cook

beef rendang

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Recently hubby and I have become a bit bored with cooking the same meals night after night, week after week and so I happened to come across an advert for Simply Cook. They had a deal, if you bought four recipe kits it would cost £3, so I thought, “Well, what is there to lose?” So I sent off for the pack. The idea is quite simple, they send you a letter-sized box which contains 4 recipe kits and step-by-step recipe cards.

You supply the meat, vegetables, rice, etc., and they say that in 20 minutes you’ll have a meal. So we decided to put it to the test….

Our recipe of choice was Beef Rendang, the description from Simply Cook was:

Often referred to as “wet rendang” as opposed to the dry, slow cooked version, you’ll whizz through preparing this speedy beef curry with ginger, chilli, clove and desiccated coconut.

Ingredients

Vegetables and flavour pods

120 basmati rice

250g sirloin/rump steak
Cut into finger-width strips

1 small onion

200ml coconut milk

Store Cupboard

Vegetable oil

They do suggest that you can add 6 new potatoes, (which we didn’t do) and 100g green beans (which we did) and we also put in a sliced pepper. Plus they suggest an alternative of chopped chicken instead of steak and courgettes instead of green beans.

How did I get on?

The instructions were very clear and on reading them, it seemed a little too easy to be making an authentic curry. We cooked the rice as normal, though hubby added some turmeric spice for a bit of colour and the green beans were boiled, drained and kept aside.

The beef strips were cooked quickly in a pan over medium heat, 20 seconds on each side to sear and lightly browned. Removed and kept aside.

The onions were fried for two minutes, along with the peppers and the first flavour pod was added, Garlic Paste, which was cooked for a further two minutes.

The Rendang Paste was stirred in, with a splash of water, and fried for another two minutes.

The coconut milk was poured into the pan, simmered for ten minutes, adding water if it was too dry.

Finally, we added the green beans and the beef with its juices, sprinkled over the Rendang Garnish, cooked for a further two minutes and then it was ready to serve!

Finished and ready to eat!

Thoughts

I have to say that the smells which were enveloping our kitchen as we were making this were amazing! Even though the dish didn’t look as appetising as I would have liked, it tasted so good. It was a little spicy, but that only added to the experience. There was just enough for the two of us, but they do show you the amount of ingredients on the recipe card if you wanted to serve six.

As for their claim that you can cook this in 20 minutes… yes, absolutely you can.

I am looking forward to making the other meals we have in our pack and I will let you know how we get on with those!

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