Making Saag Paneer

 By : Margaret Groarke

We’ve received a lot of lovely spinach in recent weeks. One week I made a spinach salad with roasted beets and goat cheese (all from our CSA). But the second time, I wanted to try making a favorite Indian dish, Sag Paneer. 

The challenge here was finding the paneer, the cheese. I went to Dhaka, an incredible Bengali market on E. 204th Street, where I found a Turkish cheese called Beyaz Peynir, which was more like a feta cheese. Strangely, my favorite Indian cookbook didn’t have a recipe for Saag Paneer. Using a recipe from the New York Times, I made the dish, and while the cheese tasted fine, it wasn’t what I was looking for. 

I asked a Pakistani friend, who said she buys paneer at Brother’s Indian Market on Central Avenue in Yonkers. I walked in and started looking around, and a man greeted me and asked me what I want. When I said I was looking for paneer, he brought me over to a refrigerated case. 

“Which brand are you looking for? Do you want a block, or cubes? We also have frozen.”

So many choices for a person who’s never bought paneer before! I picked out a brand called Sawad. 

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” he asked.

Oh, I’m just going to buy some frozen samosas over here. 

“But we have fresh!”

And sure enough, in the front of the store were several trays of clearly homemade samosas and other appetizers. The samosas were only 99 cents each, and they were delicious filled with potatoes and peas and slightly spicy. 

Saag Paneer is super-easy to make. Cleaning and chopping the spinach is the most time-consuming part, and that doesn’t take long. Kay Chun at the Times suggests chopping the spinach in batches in a food processor, but you can also chop it with a knife. It doesn’t need to be super finely chopped. Remember that spinach cooks down a lot – 8 cups of packed spinach made just enough for our family of three. 

Cut the cheese into cubes and fry it in a little oil on a pan. It will brown slightly as it fries; turn the cubes over so it gets brown on 2 or 3 sides. Then put the cubes of cheese on a plate. 

Then, in the same pan, saute some onion, chopped (one medium onion should be good), minced ginger (a one inch piece), and 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped. Add salt and pepper. Cook it over medium heat, so that you can let it get slowly slightly brown. The Times recipe was a little underflavored for my taste – I would try using 2 teaspoons of coriander, 1 teaspoon of cumin, and ½ teaspoon of garam masala. Stir to mix the spices with the vegetables, and to allow the spices to cook. Add water if necessary to keep it from burning. 

Next add the spinach, and a half cup of water, stirring it to mix the spinach with the vegetable spice mix, and to let all of it cook. When the spinach seems well cooked, turn the heat down low or off, add back in the paneer, and a ½ cup or so of yogurt or heavy cream, and stir it gently. 

Serve with rice. If you go to Brother’s, you can buy some naan or chapati or other bread to go with it. Enjoy!