Vegan Palak Paneer

Indian dishes are so well suited to vegetarian and vegan cooking. One of my favourite things about visiting India is the food, it is an endless adventure of deliciousness. Traditional Indian vegetarian cuisine includes diary, but excludes eggs. There are some great dishes that are based on paneer, Indian cottage cheese, and saag paneer is one of my favourites. Palak is spinach in Hindi, so this dish is simply “spinach and cheese”. Spinach is a nutrient-rich super food, as Popeye knew. It is rich in fibre, and also contains high amounts of carotenoids (vitamin A), vitamin C, vitamin K, folic acid, iron, potassium, magnesium and calcium. Wow, all the good stuff you need, and it is actually one of the best plant-based sources of iron you can eat. Unfortunately it suffers from being considered a boring limp and bland tasting vegetable. Saag paneer is therefore a delicious way to get more spinach in your diet.

I knew there had to be a way to make a vegan version of paneer dishes, so I set out to search the vegan blog-sphere (my goodness you can get lost in there!). Paneer does not have a strong cheese flavour, and so tofu is an excellent substitute. A cool trick I learnt from this recipe is to drop tofu into boiling water for a couple of minutes to firm it up and make the texture more like paneer.

The best recipe I have found is from the site Rainbow Plant Life. Nisha, from Rainbow Plant Life also has a youtube video of the recipe. Its great as it is, so I figured no need to re-write it out!

The ingredients for this, and many Indian dishes, look daunting due to the long list of spices, but once your cupboard is stocked the preparation is actually very simple and quick, and the result is soo good.

The spinach sauce is made in two steps, with the spinach blended with cashews to make the rich creamy base, and the onions and spices fried and then added to the spinach sauce. I have only used the boiled tofu method. She also shows a version with baked tofu, let me know if you try this and what you think of it.

What I really love about this recipe is that it has nuts and beans (cashew and tofu) together, which makes it a complete protein source, and well as all the benefits of the spinach. And it tastes just as rich and creamy as a dairy version.

Enjoy!