Sunday, August 09, 2015

it's not all triumphs chez Kevin

My Korean buddy JW, having lived four years in India with his family, came back to Korea this past February. He had changed somewhat; India had changed him. His little kids had spent much of their lives in India, so they both spoke English—the older son to a greater degree than the younger daughter. JW's wife, BH (not Big Hominid), loaded me up with goodies after I had visited her home and cooked for the family. Among the goodies were two packages of Indian powder, one of which I decided to use Saturday night to make dinner. As you see in the photo below, the package called for paneer, a firm but crumbly Indian cheese that, as I mentioned in a previous post, can be made at home.


Devout Hindus will have nothing to do with the flesh of the cow, but they have no qualms about using milk: the Hindu religious diet isn't the same as a vegan regime. The powder package called for the addition of butter, milk, oil, and tomato puree. I bought the necessary reagents at the local grocery, pan-fried my halloumi, and put the whole thing together:


What you see above doesn't look much like what's shown on the package. My paneer makhanwala preparation was brown, not red, and although the pan-fried halloumi looked like paneer, it really wasn't. I suspect the dish would have been a lot better had I used actual paneer instead of halloumi, and had I added vegetables along with some chicken. The sauce turned out to be surprisingly bland; I dumped in a mess of sriracha to add some spice, and thought about eating some oi-kimchi along with it, but I was too lazy to fetch the oi-kimchi from out of the fridge. Conclusion: halloumi is an awesome cheese, but it's no substitute for paneer. I've learned my lesson.


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1 comment:

Charles said...

I tried that experiment once as well, halloumi for paneer. It works, I guess, but it's something completely different.