I loooove Indian food. It's definitely one of my favorite global cuisines. When I was a vegetarian, I always ordered Palak Paneer at my fave Indian/Nepalese restaurant, Everest. This dish is a spinach curry with chunks of Indian-style cottage cheese. Unfortunately, now that I'm vegan, I haven't been able to satisfy my palak paneer craving. So I finally decided to attempt my own! ha. (Actually, I wonder if they would allow me to order it without the cheese. I'll have to try one day.) I haven't done any real Indian cooking before. The extent of my Indian cooking abilities mostly involves buying a packet of pre-made Indian curry and reheating it in a pot of boiling water or the microwave, which clearly doesn't count.
After looking at scores of recipes online, I decided to go with this one. I have to say, making palak paneer is kind of an ordeal... washing the spinach, boiling it, blending it, cooking it again... But the good thing is that it will last a long time in your fridge or freezer. So I was eating the leftovers for a few days! When I ate it immediately after it was cooked, the bitterness of the spinach was noticeable, but it tasted really awesome the next day, probably because the spices got absorbed into the tofu more.
My palak paneer doesn't look like the one at Everest cuz I think I didn't blend the spinach enough, which made mine thicker and chunkier. But heck, it was still geeeuuud~ Even my sister approved! I'm really happy that my first Indian dish turned out edible! I can't wait to try it again.