Tofu/dragon bean salad

OK, so I made this a long time ago (6-9 mths) and only remember it because I made notes in my cooking notebook. 

Press 1lb tofu, slice into 6 slabs, fry until crusty and brown.  Slice each slab 1/4" crosswise.

Steam 1lb dragon beans.  Cut into chunks and remove strings.

Whisk together 1/4 cup sliced culantro, 4 garlic cloves smashed in a salt paste, juice of 2 limes, 2 tbsp Golden Mountain light soy and 2 tbsp honey.

Slice 6-8 shallots crosswise 1mm thin.  Fry these rings in very hot oil until browning and crispy.  SHALLOTS WILL BE DONE BEFORE THEY SEEM TO BE DONE.  COOKING WILL  COMPLETE AFTER REMOVING FROM OIL.

Toss together all ingredients, season with salt/pepper.  Serve at room temp.  

PANEER PIE!

OK, so I have had a Paneer pie in mind for a long time.  I even made some quick notes to remind myself of what I had in mind.  "copious shallots/onions....garlic...toasted pine nuts/pepitas....golden raisins....cumin, curry".

I wanted a rich, sweet, earthy, spicy dish.  Here's what I came up with.

First, I soaked some golden raisins in boiling water to rehydrate/plump.

 

I sliced several small yellow onions and drizzled them with kecap manis. 

 

These went into the Romertopf and into the oven around 400 to roast until melty and sweet.

 

 

In a large saute pan, I toasted 5 oz or so of unsalted, raw pepitas until crisp, browned and starting to release some oil.

For the rest of the filling, I diced butternut squash (just the bulb from a largish squash) and two large carrots.  Got these sauteeing in olive oil and the remaining oil from the pepitas.

Meanwhile, I made a spice blend.  Most plentiful to least, I used cumin, coriander seed, black pepper, hint of both cinnamon and allspice.  Total volume, maybe 3 tbsp.  To the spice mix, I added 5 or so cloves of garlic, smashed and minced, a small knob of ginger peeled and minced, and these weird yellow chiles I got from a coworker minced very fine (heat-wise you could use thai dragons or something similar).

I also got some tomatoes ready.  I had just processed a huge batch of tomatoes several ways:  for this I used both smoked tomatoes and oven roasted tomatoes.  I squished them manually and roughly chopped the bigger chunks that remained.

Once the squash and carrot started to get some color, I added the onions.

When the onions came out of the oven, they were super sweet and had released a ton of liquid.  I added the melted onions and their liquid to the pan and let simmer

Let that simmer for a short while then added the tomatoes, spice blend and plumped golden raisins.  Let everything simmer until much of the liquid was evaporated.  Added the pepitas and let cook 5 minutes or so to blend flavors.

Finally, I added the cubed paneer (12 oz) and cooked for two minutes or so.  Tasted, adjusted seasoning, and cooled.

I used my standard shortening pastry for the bottom and the butter pastry for the tops.  1/3 filling in each pie and baked in the Breville until crusty and brown.