How to make curry roasted vegetables with paneer

Make life easy in autumn and roast everything in one pan. Julia Platt Leonard brings Indian spice and cheese into the mix

National Curry Week begins on Monday (Photos Julia Platt Leonard)

With autumn here, roasted vegetables are a natural choice. They’re even better if you bung everything into one pan and let a bit of time and a lot of heat do the hard work.

I was inspired by Nik Sharma’s new book Seasons: Big Flavours, Beautiful Food and his recipe for roasted cauliflower, paneer and mixed lentil salad.

He’s a brilliant cook influenced by India (where he was born and raised) and California (where he lives now), with a touch of southern US cooking (where his husband hails from).

For this recipe, I’ve tossed chunks of pumpkin, wedges of red onion and cubes of paneer – a fresh cheese popular in Indian cooking – in a spice mixture.

The beauty of paneer is that it won’t melt, so you can roast it without a problem.

You could make your own curry powder – and by all means do if you’re so inspired – but a well-sourced, store bought curry powder is absolutely fine and a real time saver.

I’ve added in some mustard seeds and cumin seeds and a yoghurt-coriander-lime sauce for extra zing.

Serve it with rice as a main meal or as is as a side. You’ll have leftover sauce but save it to serve with grilled chicken or fish, or as a dip for raw vegetables.

(Julia Platt Leonard)

Curry roasted vegetables with paneer

Serves 2-3 as a main dish or 4-6 as a side dish

400g pumpkin, peeled and chopped into chunks
225g paneer, cubed 
1 medium red onion, peeled and sliced into 8 wedges
3 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
1 tbsp curry powder
1½ tsp mustard seeds, a combination of yellow and black
½ tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp salt
150g greek yoghurt
15g coriander, roughly chopped plus additional for garnish
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
1 lime, zested and juiced
1 green chilli (about 10g), seeded and roughly chopped
Salt

Preheat oven to 250C. Mix the oil, curry powder, mustard seeds, cumin seeds and salt in a large bowl. Toss the pumpkin, cubed paneer and red onion wedges in the oil so they’re thoroughly coated. Place in a deep roasting tin and place in the pre-heated oven.

Turn the vegetables and paneer every 10 minutes or so until they’re nicely browned and a knife can be inserted easily into the pumpkin. If the onions are starting to darken too much, remove them from the tin and continue to cook the pumpkin and paneer until done. This should take around 20-25 minutes in total.

While the vegetables and cheese are cooking, make the yoghurt sauce. Blitz all the ingredients for the sauce together with a handheld mixer, in the small bowl of a food processor or in a blender until smooth and bright green. The mixture should be pourable – the consistency of single cream.

Place the roasted vegetables and paneer on a serving plate and drizzle generously with the sauce. Garnish with additional chopped coriander and serve warm.

@juliapleonard