The 5 Zloty Chef: Palak Paneer (cottage cheese pieces in a spinach sauce)

When vegetarian meals taste this good, you forget about meat completely. Palak paneer is an Indian classic which is universally popular both in its homeland and in UK restaurants too.

Palak - spinach

Paneer - a kind of hard Indian cottage cheese, good for cooking because it doesn't melt

Serves: 4

Cost per person: 3 zl (60 UK pence, 60 Indian rupees)

What you need for the paneer:

- 1 1/2 litres of full fat fresh milk

- the juice of 1-2 lemons

What you need for the palak (spinach) sauce:

- around 350g of spinach

- 2 onions finely sliced or chopped

- 2 cloves garlic minced

- 1 inch ginger minced

- 2 green chillies sliced

- 2 black cardamons

- decent piece of cinnamon bark

- 1-2 cloves

- salt to taste

- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

- 1 tsp cumin seeds

- 2 bay leaves (optional)

- 1/2 tsp pepper corns

- 1/2 tsp turmeric

- 1/3 tsp chilli powder

- 1 tsp coriander powder

- a dash of freshly grated nutmeg (optional)

- a splash of lemon juice (optional)

- 1 tsp fenugreek leaves (kasouri methi)

- a dash of cream

Let's start with the paneer:

1. Gently heat up the milk in a large pan until just about boiling. Squeeze in the lemon juice and stir until the curds separate from the whey.

2. Strain out the curds into a cheese cloth. I didn't have one, so I used a poor quality tea towel (clean!) instead. Poor quality is good because there are bigger gaps between the fibres which allows the liquid to filter out.

3. wrap the cloth round the curds and squeeze, squeeze and squeeze some more until you can't squeeze any more water out of it. Press under a heavy object (e.g. a pan filled with water) for 2 hours till it sets. Remove from the cloth.

4. Cut up into cubes

An alternative to this is just go out and find a hard cottage cheese or equivalent from a shop. Saves the hassle. For example, Lidl do quite a good Balkan style cheese which works quite well (careful, though - it does melt eventually). In the UK, Asian shops will sell real paneer.

Now let's do the sauce!

1. Wash the spinach and transfer to a pan with a small amount of water. Bring to the boil and simmer it all down till the spinach is soft. DON'T cover the pan! The spinach will lose its fantastic colour if you do!

2. Meanwhile.... Prep the other stuff. Spices ready... Chop up the onions and chillies. Mince the ginger and garlic

3. Whizz up the spinach in a blender

4. Heat up a good dash of vegetable oil in a pan. Cumin seeds in, followed shortly by the other whole spices.

5. Onions in. Add a pinch of salt. Fry on low-medium heat till reduced in size and golden in colour - should take around 15 minutes.

6. When the onions are getting there, get the chillies, ginger and garlic in there and fry out the rawness for a minute or two.

7. Whack in the powder spices and stir in for a few seconds to release their aroma. Yeah!!

8. Hang around no longer! Get the spinach in!

9. If you're feeling crazy, you could grate in a small amount of fresh nutmeg at this point.

10. Chuck the rest of those spices in! Cook on a low heat for around 5 minutes. Check the seasoning and add a little more salt if you like and if your blood pressure is up to it.