June 2026 Recipe: Paneer Curry Casserole
Keeping up with my 2026 Bingo Card, I'm making one new recipe each month. I didn't actually intend for this to be my recipe this month. I was going to make something more Mexican-inspired, but the store wasn't selling key ingredients I needed. In a panic, I picked this because my partner said she wanted to have it about a month ago because it seemed fun and simple. It definitely is fairly easy, although I feel like that goes against the spirit of this challenge, but y'know.
I've been an eternal battle with paneer. The idea of it is appealing, but I can't seem to ever cook it properly so it has any flavour. I doubt this time will be much different, but I've grown to love cooked, bland paneer that I'm just happy to eat it again.
Ingredients
- 1 can of coconut milk
- 1 can of chickpeas (drain & rinse)
- 1 can of tomato paste
- 1 block of paneer
- 1 head of cauliflower (cut into bite-sized pieces)
- 1 yellow onion (diced)
- 4 cloves of garlic (minced)
- 1 Tbsp of grated ginger
- 1 Tbsp of garam masala
- 1 Tsp of ground coriander seed
- 1 Tsp of kashmiri chili powder
- Salt and cumin to taste
Tools Needed
- Normal-sized casserole dish
- Grater
- Aluminum foil
Preparation
- Dice your yellow onion, cube your paneer, cut up your cauliflower
- Put all your seasonings, minced garlic, and grated ginger into a bowl
- Drain and rinse your chickpeas, open your tomato paste & coconut milk cans
- Over pre-heated to 375 F
Cooking
- Dump in seasonings, garlic, ginger coconut milk, and tomato paste into the casserole dish. Mix until consistent.
- Stir in chickpeas and diced yellow onion.
- Bake for 20 minutes at 375 F, covered with aluminum foil.
- Remove from oven and stir in cauliflower
- Sprinkle in paneer without mixing
- Bake for another 20 minutes.
You can serve it with naan or basmati rice. We did rice, but wished we had naan instead, which saved another Indian dish we tried making.
Final Results
My partner's thoughts: It is not great. It's severely lacking in fat and salt; this recipe normally requires cream and it's completely missing. The paneer is flavourless, the sauce is runny, and the onions don't really add anything to it. This recipe author seems obsessed with "healthy" bland food, and everything I've tried from them is always missing critical ingredients to flavour and texture.
My thoughts: It's wild to me that you can add so many different types of aromatics, have a dish smell amazing, then it tastes like nothing. After eating this, I feel like I just wasted calories and wish I ate anything else with any kind of flavour My partner and I immediately had some peanut butter toast just to get the taste out of our mouths. Part of me wishes I went to another store to get the ingredients I needed for the other dish I wanted to make.
This might be the final attempt at making paneer outside of butter sauce. It's just not working out and I keep getting disappointed. I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong, if I'm not trying hard enough, or my expectations are too high. It always tastes better at the restaurant.