Kitchen Adventures - Paneer Curry with Peas

Indian food (and culture) is one of this family's favorites. Even the boys eat the food, know how to order their favorites at a restaurant (with better pronunciation that I have, actually), and firmly believe in our rule of thumb: the spicier the better! I attribute their love for the food to our having lived in Fremont for a while. We were surrounded with all sorts of yummy Indian and Pakistani restaurants, which we so dearly miss. And we still have yet to find a decent Indian restaurant within 25 miles of Tracy. Also, for the first few years of Mikey's life, his nanny was an Indian woman who fed him all of the staple Indian dishes and snacks, which he grew to love, and continues to ask for. He even learned how to understand and speak a few basic words, like "eat", "come here", and "more".
It was inevitable that Shawn and I would try our hands at a cooking an Indian dish. Shawn has already mastered a pretty good eggplant curry dish, although I don't know how authentic it could be described as. We have been dyyying to try something new. Last week, I stumbled upon a blog post with this recipe for Paneer Curry with Peas and made sure it had a prime spot on this week's meal plan.
I love that we had every single spice that this recipe called for already present in our spice pantry, all the way down to the Garam Masala. Shawn and I are spice collectors. If we are at a store and see a spice we don't have, we will snatch it up, even if we don't need it or don't know what the hell we'd use it for. And more often than not, we try a new recipe that needs it within a few weeks.My favorite part of this dish is the paneer. I LOVE PANEER! Paneer is a fresh cow's-milk cheese that is frequently used as a substitute for meat in many Indian dishes. Anything on the menu of an Indian restaurant with paneer as an ingredient has never failed to be absolutely delicious. We bought a block of it at a local grocery store for this recipe. But I had a previous co-worker who taught me how to make it from scratch, so I might try that at some point. Buying paneer in the valley can get expensive since there are only a handful of stores that carry it.I followed the recipe word for word and it came out soooo delicious. I never imagined I could cook restaurant-style Indian food at home! We devoured the finished product so quickly, I didn't even get to take a photo. It looked just like the photo in the recipe post. :)