Relishing the Spoilt Milk – Change of taste over time.

Last Saturday my wife made Hariyali Paneer Kabaabs with a mouth watering dip that added taste to the Kabaab.

I am just wondering how over the times, I have changed to relish something I never liked in my life.

The syllable Paneer rhymes with Panneer. Paneer (Hindi) is Cottage cheese, and Panneer (In Tamil it means Rose water) In my young age, when I was first introduced to North Indian cuisine, I used to think Paneer dishes were just gravies with rose water essence. Even there were times that I was thinking Paneer (cottage cheese) is not a vegetarian food. I was under impression that it is Cow’s Fat!

Few years after that, my cousin introduced me to this diosh and first bite, I just decided that that was not my cup of tea. Bland and spongy were the chunks of cheese in a Onion gravy. In the due course I came to know that paneer is made by making the milk is split.

In 2004 I was working in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace>West Bengal</st1lace>. Most of the Indians accept that WB is the Land known for its Rasagolla’s and other milk sweets. Milk sweets? I would then say “spoilt milk” sweets. My colleagues, most of them Bengalis and Assamese would relish on these sweets and I would say, come to Chennai and I will show how milk sweets would taste.

When I was working in WB, I got married and took my wife there. On a fine day we did make a good Akkara Vadisal (Milk Kheer made of Milk, Rice and Jaggery)

When my colleagues ate the Kheer, they were speechless and I was boasting that the taste of South is the best.

Life churned surprises when I changed jobs and relocated to <st1:City><st1lace>Bangalore</st1lace></st1:City>. My in laws were Paneer adoring clan. Anything with Paneer would be appreciated. I once wondered if my MIL would take a piece of fresh paneer with coffee.

I used to maintain that I don’t like spoilt milk and would like to be a south Indian always. There were incidents when we went out as a family, I would have ordered a normal subzi and others subzi with paneer. As was the practice – share and eat, every one would dig into my subzi and I would be left with literally a piece of subzi and couple of rotis.

Such incidents shook did put me in a fix and one of these days my wife spoke to me and told, “Why don’t you try and appreciate the taste of Paneer. I am sure you would appreciate it” This made me to try out some of the Paneer recipes.

Well some of you are aware that my wife is an amazing cook and she made a few Paneer dishes to me at home. Slowly I started to develop a taste for Paneer.

When she made Paneer Kebaabs with a mouth-watering dip, all for me alone…. I was on the ninth heaven and did enjoy a lot.

This taught me “Perception of a matter is always influenced by certain pre-conceived notions and when we try and break those notions and think out of the box, we can see the positives in the matter, rather than grinding our teeth over the negatives”