You must have heard about daab chingri and that is one of my favourite prawn recipe too. Inspired by the classic recipe, I recently cooked daab paneer and loved it so much that it has become quite regular on my table.
I had eaten daab recipes in hotels and restaurants in the past but never had bothered to cook anything with them at home, apart from adding the tender coconut meat to some of my kheer recipes. When I saw a daab chingri recipe by Ipshita Bhandari on a facebook group I felt tempted to try that at home. After all I have easy supply of daab and the daab wala ready to cut it into convenient halves.
*The earthen pot can be placed in the microwave oven and cooked at high for 5-7 minutes.
Tender coconut is a great thirst quencher, a delicious
blend of electrolytes that nature has packaged so wonderfully for us.
Daab, as tender coconut is called in Hindi and few other regional languages, has been the
favourite drink whenever we can get it. Few decades ago we used to get
daab only when we traveled to coastal towns but thankfully it is
available in cities like Delhi fairly easily.
To
me it feels like a wonder every time I sip from a tender coconut, right
since my childhood. Each tender coconut packs a different flavour if
you consider the minor variations of sweet and salt, the mineral taste
and of the course the malai (tender coconut meat) that lines the inner
wall, like a surprise unfolding gently.
Tender
coconut was our saviour last year when both of us were hit by
chikangunia together. We had asked the neighbourhood daab wala to
deliver 2 tender coconuts every morning and evening and that helped us a
lot in recovering from the most annoying sickness we have had. But then
we made friends with this daab wala and he is always ready to deliver
at home, he will come with his cleaver sometimes and cut open the daab
so we can eat the malai as well. All those tender coconut shells went
into my compost heap but then I decided to make a raised bed using them,
the next garden project. About that some other time as I am sharing a
daab paneer recipe with you right now.
I had eaten daab recipes in hotels and restaurants in the past but never had bothered to cook anything with them at home, apart from adding the tender coconut meat to some of my kheer recipes. When I saw a daab chingri recipe by Ipshita Bhandari on a facebook group I felt tempted to try that at home. After all I have easy supply of daab and the daab wala ready to cut it into convenient halves.
The
Bengali daab chingri is a popular dish, easy to cook but the daab is
such an exotic ingredient that everyone serves the daab chingri with a
certain sense of pride. I am a sucker for easy recipes with clean
flavours, thankfully this recipe was appreciated by everyone who tasted
it.
In fact for a week I
was on a spree to cook with daab malai and found the right balance that
works for my type of palate. The balance of mustard, green chilies and
tender coconut meat, the three crucial ingredients of this secret sauce
is a distinct personal choice according to the extent you can take the
pungency of mustard mixed with the heat of green chilies. The fresh daab
malai (tender coconut meat) renders a unique sweetness to this dish and
that’s where lies the specialty of this dish.
Take
care to ask your daab wala to chose a daab with soft but generous malai
in it, if it has lesser malai just consume it as is, if the malai has
turned meaty you can snack upon it as we need the firm yet jelly like
malai for this recipe. If you are making daab chingri or daab paneer for
a crowd you can use a mix of tender and not too tender coconut meat as
that will maintain the flavour.
Ingredients
One whole daab (tender coconut) with generous amount of soft jelly like meat
200 gm paneer
2 tbsp yellow mustard
2 cloves of garlic
3-4 green chilies or more if you like
1 tbsp or more mustard oil (depending on your liking of pungency)
¼ tsp of turmeric powder
100 ml coconut milk (optional but recommended)
Equipment of choice, depending on whether you want to bake the mix or steam it
Both halves of the tender coconut if you are using them for baking
Or a baking dish of 1 litre capacity with lid
Or a steel dabba big enough to accommodate the mix and fit inside a pressure cooker
Or an earthen pot and 3-4 fresh tender bottle gourd leaves, to be baked in a conventional oven or a microwave oven
Procedure
Separate the water and the malai of the daab, save the water and chop the malai in small bits.
Make
a paste of mustard, garlic cloves and green chilies along with turmeric
powder. Powdering the mustard seeds first and then adding some water
and other ingredients helps make a smooth paste.
Chop the paneer in small bits too.
Slit 1-2 green chilies.
Mix
all the other ingredients together, along with half of the mustard oil.
Add some of the coconut water to make the consistency as required. You
need a mix with saucy consistency. I added coconut milk from a carton
for this step every time as I can’t not drink the coconut water. I found
the coconut milk made this recipe even better.
For cooking the daab paneer you can follow any* one of the following procedures.
*Transfer the mix to the emptied halves of daab, cover with aluminium foil and bake it for 25-30 minutes at 180 C.
*Transfer
the mix in an earthen pot lined with bottle gourd leaves or fresh
turmeric leaves, cover wit the same leaves, fix the lid and bake for 20
minutes at 180 C.
*The earthen pot can be placed in the microwave oven and cooked at high for 5-7 minutes.
*Transfer
the mix to a steel dabba, cover with lid, keep the dabba in a pressure
cooker which has ½ cup of water in it and pressure cook till the first
whistle blows. Cool the pressure cooker on its own and open the lid.
After
cooking with any of the above process, open the lid and garnish with a
few slit green chilies and a drizzle of the remaining mustard oil.
Serve hot with steaming hot rice, preferably short grain rice like gobindobhog or jeerabatti.
I
was suggested by Ipshita that it is better to cook it in the daab shell
to bring the rustic flavour but I found it good even when I cooked the
mix in a steel container or an earthen pot lined with fresh bottle gourd
leaves. This is a recipe that one can adjust according to personal
choice of the cooking vessel used, but please don’t distort the golden
trinity of mustard paste, daab malai and green chilies.
This daab paneer recipe will become a family favourite if you like the flavours of mustard. In this recipe the pungency of mustard is quite sublime due to the daab malai used. Please try the recipe and let me know.
This daab paneer recipe will become a family favourite if you like the flavours of mustard. In this recipe the pungency of mustard is quite sublime due to the daab malai used. Please try the recipe and let me know.
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