Paneer Butter Masala on a Pizza

For those of you in the Bellevue-Redmond area, you must have visited CanAm Pizza atleast once. If not, maybe you should, especially to try their East Indian Pizzas. I was very happy to find out about this, as you know, the veggie options for pizza are very limited otherwise and I had been pampered by the tandoori pizzas at Pizza Hut in India. The butter paneer masala pizzas are my favourites and I had a pizza crust ( I use the Boboli brand) that has been sitting in the freezer for a very long time. About a month ago, I made a eggplant-mushroom pizza and I somehow forgot about the extra crust that we got.

Another reason for a paneer butter masala was that, I had tried out the butter chicken recipe from Varsha's blog (which was a big hit with AJ and some other friends who tasted it) and AJ said that the gravy reminded him of the paneer butter butter masala we used to have in this really small restaurant called "Aiyappas' in Kollam during our college days! That was one of my all time favourites. So, from then on, I wanted to try the butter chicken gravy again , but with paneer, this time. Thanks Varsha, for that yummy recipe of yours!

So here is what i did. I marinated the paneer instead of the chicken using the same marinade recipe. I pretty much followed rest of Varsha's recipe except that I added some garlic to the onions while grinding it to a paste and changed the quantities a little bit.

Here is the recipe that i used :

For marinade: 2 tsp red chilli powder, 1/3 cup yoghurt, 1 tbsp lime juice, 2 tsp Eastern Egg Masala, salt

Other Ingredients : 1 cup cubed paneer; 2 cloves garlic,minced; 1/2 inch piece of cinnamon, 4-5 whole black pepper, 2 green cardamom pods, 1 star anise, 1 bayleaf ; 1/2 tsp fennel seeds; 1 red onion, chopped ; few raisins; 1 medium sized tomato, pureed; 2-3 green chillies; 2 tsp chilli powder; 2 tsp Eastern Egg masala; 2 tsp ketchup, 1/3 cup fresh cream; butter/oil; a few tsp kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves); 1/2 tsp sugar; a few sprigs of cilantro, chopped

Marinate the paneer and keep aside for a couple of hours and then grill it in the oven in the broiler setting for 20 mins or so.

Melt the butter or oil in a kadhai (indian style wok) and saute the onions, garlic and green chillies. Keep aside till cool. Grind them into a puree in a blender. Heat some more butter in the kadhai and splutter the fennel seeds in it. Add the raisins as well. Now add in the onion paste and saute for a while. Add the pureed tomato and cook for a while. Mix in the chilli powder, egg masala powder and let it cook a little more. Now add in the letchup, cream and the paneer and sugar as well. Let it simmer for a while. Top it off with some kasuri methi and chopped cilantro.

So, your paneer butter masala is ready.

Since the curry already has a gravy, I did not put any extra sauce on the pizza crust. I just spread the paneer butter masala on the crust and dotted it with miniscule pieces of mozzarella cheese. You won't even see the cheese, but you get a faint taste of it, which is good! I put the pizza in a preheated oven at 350F and let it sit there for about 10 mins or so. Since the curry is already cooked, thats all the time you need for it to mingle with the crust , just about a little bit. Once you take out the pizza, garnish with some fresh cilantro leaves, slice the pieces out and you are ready to serve and eat!!