Snakes and Ladders

Peppered Paneer

Serves Two

Total Calories - 580 

Preparation time:

Cutting the paneer into cubes – 2mins

Mixing and Marinating time – 30mins

Frying – 2mins

Artwork on the dish – 5-7mins

Waiting for the paneer to cool down – 10mins

Preparing the plate – 7mins  

Ingredients:

Paneer (Indian Cottage Cheese) – 100gms

Oil – 2tbsp

Ground Black Pepper – 2tbsp

Rosemary – 1tsp

Lemon juice – 1tsp

Green Chillies – 2nos

Baby Carrots – 2nos

Tomato Sauce – 2ml

Mustard Sauce – 2ml

Whole Black Pepper – 21nos

Mayonnaise – 10ml

Food Colour – Blue – 2 drops

Salt 

Fining the right paneer:

I did have some precut ‘Amul’ paneer cubes in the freezer, but found out that they were in all shapes and sizes. I therefore went looking for that traditional Indian slab of paneer, similar to what we get from the ‘dugdhalayas’(milk shops) in Gujarat. After looking at many Indian supermarkets, I was lucky to find one in my own backyard, at Lulu’s Gharaffa store. Incidentally this was not in the Indian section; I found it in the special Cheeses section. This one has ‘Paneer’ written in Hindi on the cover but, it is manufactured in California, USA!!

One thing I found out that this paneer need not be placed in the freezer. You just have to refrigerate them. The advantage is that they are always soft and ready to use, unlike the regular packed ones, which need to be thawed each time.  These are good.

How I cut them:

I wanted exactly 27nos of paneer cubes for this dish. I cut them into roughly 1cmx1cmx1cm sized cubes. I didn’t want them to be exact dimensions; just near about.

After I cut the paneer cubes, I just arranged them to check out how they look. Again, I was not so adamant about getting a perfect cube; just near about.

The baby carrots and green chillies were purely for garnishing, and I used the chillies to make out snakes. I slit them into halves and removed all the seeds. I used carrot to make out ladders by slicing each carrot lengthwise into strips and made holes to add rungs. 

How I cooked it:

The Main Dish

In a bowl, I mixed the ground pepper, rosemary and salt. Later I tossed in the paneer and added the lime juice.

I then covered the bowl with a plastic wrap and left it in the fridge to marinate for around half an hour.

I then heated the whole black peppers in a wok.

When the marinating as well as frying the whole black peppers was done, I heated oil in the wok over high flame and tossed in the paneer, cooking it by tossing the mix till it turned brownish. 

The Artwork

I used mayonnaise mixed with blue food colour to make the Snake and Ladder board. Then I placed the snakes and ladders randomly after which I made the dice by pushing in whole black pepper wherever required. 

The experience:

This was the second paneer dish that I made and again my conclusion is that it is not spicy enough. I should have added more ground black pepper to it. Certainly not spicy enough if you are planning to have this as a side dish for your hard drink but, may work for the kids though.

Yes the dice looks good but, I would not recommend anyone to make an arrangement like this. I myself will not do this again. Firstly, it is difficult to do all that arrangement when the paneer is still hot, and then, by the time it is cold, the food doesn’t taste that great. Again, I don’t know if using a gas torch for re-heating the paneer would work or not. Anyone who has one, please try and let me know.

Definitely, next time I pepper fry the paneer, I am planning to add in a couple of table spoons more of the ground pepper. Another thing I am contemplating is to inject some peppered water into the paneer using a syringe. Will it work? Let’s see.

Alternatively, using some engineering sense the size of paneer could also be reduced to half, that is, each cube of 1cmx1cmx1cm could be made into eight cubes of ½cmx½cmx½cm, that’d double the surface area, which means you’ll have double the surface area to stick the pepper on, and also further add the additional black pepper and make it spicier by not reducing the quantity of paneer.