Butter Paneer

Okay, so maybe I just lightly complained about rich, buttery Indian food that has more to do with tourist restaurants than true, authentic Indian dishes. But you really can't argue with butter paneer (more commonly called tikka masala here, since most things with butter in the title set off alarm bells for Westerners).

Again, VahRehVah comes through with another great recipe. While they use chicken in their preparation, it's a simple matter to substitute paneer instead. For my dish I simple cubed the paneer and added it at the end of the dish.

When they say "butter paneer", there really sure be an emphasis on butter. This recipe calls for 100 grams of it. If, like me, grams means little to you, here's a helpful way to think about it. Take a stick of butter and cut about a half-inch knob off on of the ends. Now put that knob back in the refrigerator and add the rest of the stick to the pan. Oh, and it also has about half a cup of cream in it as well. Also, ketchup. But you know what? It tastes pretty good, so I really can't fault it.

Tikka Masala Pizza

This isn't a very typical pizza. There's a pizza place near us called Can-Am Pizza. While it technically sells normal Italian pizzas, gyros and calzones, I feel fairly confident in saying they never really make those. I know that because the place sells incredible South Indian-style pizzas. Saag Paneer, Butter Paneer, Tandori Chicken: all these things you'd never expect to find on a pizza. But if you enjoy Indian food, you probably also enjoy having naan with it. Placing these meals on a pizza means you're just serving it on a big, round piece of naan. We love the "Butter Paneer" pizza from Can-Am, so we wanted to try to reproduce it at home.

This pizza was made around a tikka masala sauce. For simplicity, we went with a pre-made sauce from the store. For the paneer, I opted to make it from scratch at hom. I also, for the first time, made the dough myself from scratch.

Making paneer is fairly easy. You bring whole milk to the scalding point (just below boiling) and when it's reached that temperature, you add the juice of about half a lemon. This causes the milk to curdle and separate out into curds, which you then pour into a sieve lined with cheese cloth. You bind the cloth up into a ball and then press it down to form a firm cheese. You can fry this (which I've done for this pizza).

After forming the dough, I spooned out the pre-made tikka masala sauce on to the dough just like you would the tomato sauce on a more traditional pizza. I thinly sliced young red onions on a mandoline and sprinkled them over the top of that, then added the paneer. This was baked in a 500 degrees Fahrenheit oven until the crust was good to go.

Ginger and coriander would have been welcome additions to the toppings, as would tomato. Next time I might try adding a normal tomato base to the pizza as well.