Awadh Matar Paneer – Too Spiced for My Enjoyment

I haven't done a good job cooking out of my growing set of cookbooks.  Instead I've been too often relying on library-borrowed cookbooks or the Internet, as past posts indicate.   To break this streak, I decided to bring out my Phaidon India: The Cookbook to find a complement to the Milk Street Tomato Rice recipe. 

I settled on the Awadh Matar Paneer recipe, which would rely entirely on ingredients I had in my pantry.

While the dish was quite easy to put together – pre-cooking the paneer, and then tossing it in the spices that have been bloomed in the same saute pan – unfortunately it didn't quite have the flavors I tend to like.

The spices were just too overpowering for me, especially because they weren't cut by any tomatoes, cream or other vegetables besides the green peas, which were added to the end of the cooking process.  My husband did like this recipe though, so it might be a recipe repeat on his end!