Velvety vegetarian Paneer Korma Recipe; an easy and quick Indian cottage cheese curry with almonds, spices and yogurt. Make sure to cook the curry on low heat as this is a curd based curry and over heating can cause curdle.
Toast your Almonds and Poppy seeds for a minute in a hot pan on all sides until you get the fragrant, good smelling aroma. Let the toasted almonds and poppy seeds cool, then transfer to a small spice/chutney blender jar together with the onion and tomato cut into rough chunks. Blend to a fine paste and keep aside.
Add the Oil to a pan and stir fry for a minute all the spices, including, Turmeric, Chili, Cumin, Coriander p., Cinnamon, Cardamom, Bay leaf and Black Pepper. Then quickly add in the almond onion mixed paste, which you prepared earlier, and the Ginger Garlic Paste. Mix and stir cook for one two minutes.
Reduce the stove heat or even close it and add the yogurt and cream. Mix it all and return to very low heat. At that point keep the curry to cook for 2 minutes on low heat before adding the water. If the yogurt/curd is heated up too much, or the curd will curdle The curry has to simmer over a very low heat for about 20 minutes so that it gains on flavor. (When the curry cools it gets a bit thicker, the poppy seeds almond and ginger make it a bit thicker as well)
Then add the paneer cubes and cook for another 10 minutes on alower stove heat option.
Garnish with freshly chopped cilantro. Serve up hot. (I used cut culantro/Mexican long cilantro in the pictures).
Notes
Try to get white poppy seeds instead of black poppy seeds. The flavors are different. You can't substitute with black poppy.
Whole Cardamom spice slightly crushed or around ¼ Teaspoon Cardamom powder