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Paneer or Indian cottage cheese is an essential ingredient used in Indian cooking. It can be added to numerous dishes and is delicious to eat. Especially for vegetarians, it is their kind of non-veg, isn’t it? Paneer is so humble and versatile. No matter if it is a starter, a main course dish, or even a dessert, you can find paneer literally everywhere. No wonder, it has a quite many fans!
It is the milky flavour and texture of paneer which add a unique flavour to every dish. You name a dish and you can add paneer to it. Paneer Kofta, palak paneer, paneer tikka, and many other dishes are there on the list. Believe me, all of them are totally different from each other but equally delectable. Besides, it is also used in making some amazing desserts like rasgulla, rasmalai, chhena murki, and more.
The list of delicacies made from paneer is long but one that has to be on the top is Shahi Paneer. The word ‘shahi’ translates to royal in Urdu. We can guess this much that dish must have originated from a royal kitchen, but how? Shahi Paneer is indeed associated with the Mughals who ruled India for almost 300 years. Many of the dishes from their royal kitchen are fondly eaten even now. Talking about shahi paneer, this dish was not meant to be cooked in the first place but was a mistake, a mistake that wrote history.
If some food historians and legends are to be believed, a Mughal chef was making malai kofta while cutting down a big slice of paneer into small cubes for a different dish. Of course, the emperor would not eat just one dish. Accidently, some paneer cubes fell into the malai kofta gravy. Scared of how the emperor would react, he took out all the paneer from the gravy and kept it aside. After he cooked the malai kofta and served it to the emperor, he decided to taste those paneer cubes that he had messed up. But to his surprise, he was really amazed at the taste and was pleased. Soon after, he tried inventing a new dish by adding paneer cubes to the same gravy. This is when a new Mughal dish that we all just can’t enough of, came into being. It is none other than ‘Shahi Paneer’. Nobody knows if this story is true or not, but what's true is Shahi Paneer spells magic in every single bite. Isn’t it?
I know your shahi paneer cravings are now triggered. Just for you, here’s the recipe. Try making it at home and have the swaad of Mughals!
