Kesari Pulao with Paneer and Peas - Over Garnished

Don't you think this dish is a lil bit over decorated for the event...we both did..whatever I cook, I am thinking of an event and trying to get the best pic of the dish, hence this decorations...I think my decorations over powered the saffron in the dish..:(

Saffron/Kesari - All I knew abt this ingredient was only from movies...whenever a girl (here a Heroine) gets pregnant, her parents send this to her and the hubbie(here the Hero) dear dumps all the box of Kesari into the milk in one single day (that saffron box was supposed to last for more and makes the Heroine drink the milk..end of the story..

So when Sunita announced this month's spice event with saffron, I thought I shld do a lil research on this ingredient (because I did not know that this saffron can be used in so many recipes other than milk and puddings)...More about this ingredient is in Sunita's post...

I was craving for some paneer based dish for the past few days...So I finally decided to make Saffron Pulao with Paneer and Peas (I used peas just to make the dish colorful, not being health-concious :p)...Recipe is here. I replaced coconut with paneer pieces and avoided Sugar...S doesn't like sweet flavour in rice items..So I added some onions, green chillies and ginger garlic paste...to be concise I modified the whole recipe..:D according to our tastes....

Here goes the recipe,

Ingredients:

Rice - 2 cups (Raw)

Paneer - 100gm (home made or store bought) - Cut into 1 inch pieces.

Peas - 1 table spoon (boiled)

Onion - 1 sliced

Green Chillies - 3 chopped

Ginger garlic paste - 1 tsp

Ghee - 3 tbsp

Almonds - 6 sliced

Raisins - 10

Salt - 2 tsp

Milk - 1 cup

Saffron - 1 tsp

Method:

1. Wash the rice, add 4 cups of water, salt and a tsp of ghee. Cook till 3/4th done. Remove and set aside.

2. Warm up the milk and soak the saffron strands for about 5min. Mix well.

3. Mix half of this milk with the cooked rice.

4. Heat Ghee in a pan, fry the paneer pieces and remove.

5. Soak these paneer pieces in the remaining saffron milk so that they become soft.

6. In the same pan with the Ghee, roast the almonds and raisins. Remove and keep aside.

7. Again in the same pan add the onions, green chillies and Ginger garlic paste. Saute for about 5min till the onions turn transperent.

8. Add the boiled peas, cooked rice and cover.

9. Cook for 10min on low flame till the rice is completely done.

10. Finally add the paneer pieces with the soaked saffron milk and garnish with almonds and raisins.

So this is my entry to Think Spice-Think Saffron Event of this month, hosted by Sunita.