My favorite indian dishes palak paneer pork paneer is an indian Spinach curry typically made with cubes of mild soft cheese called paneer sometimes with heavy cream as well my spin on it is just as delicious and indulgent as the classic but it’s 100 vegan it’s actually quite healthy so let’s get started we’re going to start this dish by prepping the spinach curry and there are two main ingredients in this first spinach and raw cashews these have been soaked in boiling water for an hour so i’m going to drain them and the cashews are what’s going to make this curry really creamy without using any dairy and of course this recipe calls for a lot of spinach like popeye levels of spinach that’s how you know it’s good for you and this is mature spinach so it needs to be washed really thoroughly there’s like a lot of dirt in here it’s quite filthy you want to make sure that you thoroughly rinse the spinach because there’s a lot of sand hiding in those nooks and crannies i’ve got some water heating up on the stove to blanch the spinach in the meantime i’m going to prep the tofu which is our paneer substitute and you don’t need to press it like you would with a lot of recipes we’re just going to remove some of the excess water on the outside just give a little dab and what i love about this recipe is that it’s so delicious but it’s actually very healthy like deceptively so instead of cheese we have protein packed tofu instead of dairy we have cashews and of course we have all of this spinach so if you have picky kids at home this is a great way to get them to eat their greens and if you have a picky long-term partner named max

i don’t know who that could be but if you have one of those this is also a great way to get max to eat his greens too i’ve got the excess water out of the tofu so now it’s time to slice it into some cubes and to mimic the texture of the paneer which is soft but a little bit chewy we’re going to boil the tofu just for two minutes it’s very simple but it does improve the texture of the tofu quite a bit water for the spinach is boiling before we add this finish though i’m preparing an ice bath just ice and water cold water because as soon as the spinach is done boiling just two minutes we’re going to plunge it into this bowl of ice water and that is going to help the spinach stop cooking it’s going to help retain that vibrant green color so it’s a really important step all right in goes the spinach lavari clap to set a timer for two minutes alexa why can’t you understand me every time i try to ask alexa something it’s like she don’t listen to me she only listen to max i hate alexa all right it’s been two minutes i’m using this spider claw to directly transfer the spinach from the pot into the ice bath while this finish is cooling down i’m going to fill this bad boy up again to boil the tofu if you have two sauce pans you can do this at the same time boil the spinach and the tofu at the same time i didn’t plan this out too well though so i’m just gonna do it one after the other the spinach is cooled so now we’re going to drain it and get out as much moisture as we can hey it’s so cold then i’m just going to take a dish towel take our drained spinach and just lay it out here it doesn’t need to be fully dried but just let it hang out while you prep all the other ingredients all right we’re going to set this wrinkly spinach aside for the time being go see if that tofu water is boiling nope water’s not boiling yet but that means we can get started on our aromatics for the curry first thing you want to do is dice up a medium yellow onion [Music] i also have some garlic so if you work efficiently and multitask like i am

doing right now like prepping things while things are boiling and waiting to boil this is actually a very simple recipe and you can make it on a week night 45 minutes from start to finish something we make on weeknights all the time so as long as you can multitask you should be good for the garlic i’ve got two cloves and i’m going to keep whole for the Spinach Sauce it’s going to get blended all together and then i’m going to keep four cloves separate i’m going to mince those those get cooked with the onions separately on the stove some spices for the rest of the aromatics it’s really quite simple we’ve got two whole garlic cloves some ginger and a serrano pepper also a tomato recipe calls for two small tomatoes but i’ve just got a kind of a chubby one so i’m going to use one large chubby tomato and you don’t really need to finely dice these at all just give it a rough chop because the blender will take care of the work for you [Music] all right the aromatics are prepped water is boiling for the tofu i’m gonna boil it for two minutes when i come back we’re gonna make the spinach sauce [Music] the spinach sauce is actually very simple all you need to do is add to a blender some water the raw cashews that were soaked and now have been drained we’re also going to add the blanched spinach along with the aromatics that we chopped the garlic ginger serrano pepper and chopped tomatoes and finally about three quarters teaspoon of kosher salt and we’ll blend this all up until it’s smooth thick and creamy [Music] [Applause] get all those bits all right the spinach sauce is done so we’re gonna head on over to the stove and put everything together we’ve got some coconut oil heating up on the stove over medium heat once this pan is hot we’ll add one teaspoon of whole cumin seeds and we’ll cook those until they’re fragrant and slightly darker in color about one minute once these cumin seeds have been toasted add the diced onion and cook for about four to five minutes or until it’s translucent once these onions are softened we’ll go ahead and add the four cloves of minced garlic saute the garlic for one to two minutes until it’s really aromatic and fragrant and a little bit golden after the garlic is done cooking we’ll add the spices a teaspoon of coriander a quarter teaspoon of turmeric three quarters teaspoon kosher salt plenty of black pepper and optionally you can add a bay leaf now stir the spices into the onions and garlic for 30 seconds be sure to stir constantly to prevent them from burning and the spices will start to smell really flavorful reduce the heat to medium low and then pour in the spinach sauce heat the spinach sauce for about five minutes if it seems to dry out you can go ahead and add a few spoons of water as needed finally we’ll stir in two finishing spices a teaspoon of garam masala and a half tablespoon of fenugreek leaves or kaswi methi this last one is optional if you don’t have fenugreek leaves it’s fine but it does add a nice sharp flavor then we’ll fold in the boiled tofu cubes and gently toss everything to combine and make sure all the tofu cubes are well coated in the spinach curry finally we’ll cook this mixture for two to three minutes add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice and salt to taste i love serving this plaque paneer with some white basmati rice if you don’t have that you could also do some sort of indian flatbread like roti or paratha dollop scoop spoon some of this palak paneer on top and this is totally optional but if you have some coconut yogurt at home just a little spoonful at the end is a nice balance.

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