Today I’m trying palak paneer, a dish from India described on the box as “Curried spinach and cottage cheese cooked to perfection in a mild sauce.” I found this at Fox Farm Foods in Joplin, Missouri. It’s made by Ashoka, and takes 1-2 minutes to heat up in the microwave.
According to the Wikipedia entry, it’s often served with a lassi, which is a sweet milk drink from the Punjab region of India. I would SOOOOOO love to have a mango lassi with this. If you live around an Indian restaurant(not Native American, but Indian), see if they have lassis, and drink up.

The box says that it contains all natural ingredients and is suitable for vegetarians, which is nice. I like to eat healthy. Here’s what it looks like garnished with a chicken chunk from our local Charlie’s Chicken:

Now, on to eating it. The paneer is very similar to spinach dip. In fact, next thing I did after tasting just the paneer, was dip my chicken into it. It’s very good like that, too. Just like spinach dip, the spinach doesn’t come across as yucky as you might expect. In fact, did you notice the word “curried” in the description? Anytime you see “curry” or a variation thereof, that means “spicy”. Not in the sense of jalapeno or pepper spicy, but with things like ginger, green chilli and cumin. Indian spices. I don’t like spicy foods, but I can tolerate a small amount of it. The spiciness was just enough to give it flavor, and cause me to reach for my water a few times. The chicken I added has its own spices, and blends nicely with it. You can also try chips in this, since it’s so similar to spinach dip.
There are also large chunks of “Indian cottage cheese”. Tastes like mozzarella when I get a really large chunk of it. At first I thought they were potatoes, with how they’re cut. Cheese is always a good addition to spinach.

I give this palak paneer two thumbs up. It’s really not a weird dish, if you’ve tried spinach dip before. I do recommend adding something like chicken to it, though, to vary the taste a little, and in my case to dull the spiciness.