Palak Paneer, the wimpy American way

What do you do when you love Indian food, but you can't tolerate spiciness?

Well, for one thing, you can never buy pre-packaged Indian food or seasoning mixes, because they will burn your tongue off on the first bite. You basically have two options: 1) You can order all your Indian food at a restaurant and request that they prepare it "mild," or 2) you can learn to make it mild yourself!

After many years of trying Option #1 with varying degrees of success, I finally moved on to Option #2. But like any good wimpy American, I imbued the process with my close-held values of laziness and ingenuity in equal measure. The result of this  Adventure in Cooking! is a recipe for one of my favorite foods, palak paneer (spinach with cheese cubes), with 90% of its Indian-ness stripped out and modified for an unadventurous palate!

The hardest part of developing this dish was getting over my fear of Indian recipes, which always seem to have 1,001 ingredients, most of which I don't even possess. I realized that the most daunting part of almost any Indian recipe was compiling the vast number of spices required for that distinctive flavor, so here's where the ingenuity comes in. If I were to mix all the spices in advance, I would have a seasoning blend (you know, something like "Italian seasoning" or "Chinese 5-Spice") that I could just toss into my spinach and be 50% of the way there already!

I surveyed a number of palak paneer recipes on the internet, and came to the conclusion that most of them had several spices in common. I figured out a sensible relative quantity for each of them, and then mixed them all together.

So here is Part 1. Prepare in advance and thank me later!

Part 1: Palak Paneer Seasoning

• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp coriander powder
• 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• a pinch of cardamom

Feel free to adjust the amounts of each spice to your own taste. Being an allium-hater myself, I was very sparing with the garlic and onion, for example. Some recipes also called for curry powder, and while I think that's actually a spice blend of its own, you could throw it in if you were so inclined!

I found that one bowl of palak paneer required about 1/4 teaspoon of this seasoning mix to acquire sufficient flavor, so this mix recipe should get you through about 16 servings of palak paneer! Labor-saving at its finest!

Part 2: Palak Paneer

Once you have the seasoning, making actual palak paneer is a cinch! I happened to have some creamed spinach that had been – you guessed it – sitting in the freezer for over a year, so that saved me lots of bother cooking spinach, mixing it with cream, etc. All I had to do was reheat the spinach and add some cheese.

Naturally, being an American, I did not have paneer lying about, but I did have some Grandpa's Cheese Barn grilling cheese, which has a texture very similar to Indian paneer, with the added benefit of being more salty. Much better for my blood pressure!

So preparing the dish is now a simple 4-step process:

1. Put creamed spinach in a bowl
2. Mix in 1/4 tsp of palak paneer seasoning
3. Toss in some cubed pieces of paneer (or grilling cheese)
4. Microwave for approximately 88 seconds.*

*Pro tip! No Indian curry would be complete without a side of flatbread. You can put your bread plate upside-down on the curry bowl while cooking, to minimize the inevitable splattering that will occur.

I have to say that I'm pleased with the way this recipe turned out. I will probably keep the palak paneer seasoning as a regular resident of my spice cabinet, so I can throw together a curry in record time whenever the mood strikes!