Cottage Cheese (Paneer) Crescents & A Funeral

I read about these delicious Crescents in Radhika's blog Tickling Palates. So beautiful were they that I decided to make them immediately! (By the way, the picture above is from Radhika's blog!)

Ingredients -
for the crescents --
All purpose flour - 200 grams ( 2 cups)
Milk - 50-60 ml
Cottage Cheese / Paneer - 100 grams
Yeast - 2 teaspoons
Sugar - 2 teaspoons
Salt - to taste (1/2 - 3/4 tablespoon)
Melted Butter - 2 tablespoon
for the garnish / flavor --
You  can experiment with the flavors. Use any spices you want. I used the Chaat Powder for a few & for a few, I used Oregano & Chili Flakes. You can also add coriander / parsley leaves or mint leaves too.

METHOD-
1.  PROOFING THE YEAST - Add the sugar to warm milk and mix well. Add the dry yeast and mix well. Let it rest for 10-15 minutes. It becomes nice & frothy!

2. Mash or grate the cottage cheese / paneer.

3. To the flour, add salt, melted butter (2 tbsp) and the mashed paneer / cottage cheese. In this step, I also added some Red Chili Powder & some Chaat powder to blend the flavors with the flour.

4.Pour the yeast-milk mixture to the flour and knead well. Add more milk / water if necessary. Make sure you make a soft dough. Give a lot of pressure. You could even throw the dough from above to make it soft! :-P Wrap the dough with a moist cloth & let it rest for about 1-2 hours. until the dough rises & doubles in volume!

5. Divide the dough into balls. Depending on the size of your crescents, you could make small or big balls! ;-) Roll it out into a disk shaped tortilla (roti/chapati).

6. According to the recipe, you roll it out now. But I melted some butter, added my spices and applied it on the disk shaped tortilla / roti. And then, I cut it into 8 triangles (Horizontal, then vertical and then a cut across each quarter of the circle.)

7. Start rolling each triangle from the outer to the inner tip like shown in the picture.

8. Place them on a greased baking tray and drizzle the rest of your butter-spices mixture all over the crescents. Now, all you gotta do is bake at 200 Degree C for about 20 minutes (or until they are baked & turn golden yellow)! :-D

ALAS!! A terrible thing happened! :-( As I was ready to keep the tray into my oven, the plug burst!!! I didn't know what to do for 10 minutes!

9. Take a pan (heat on medium - low flame) and place some crescents on them (depending on your pan size).

10. Take a bigger vessel & enclose the crescents. (preferably, one with a handle) This creates an oven-like situation. Let it cook (bake :-D) on low to medium flame for about 2-3 minutes.

11. Take out the vessel & turn the crescents to the other side, close them & cook again for 2-3 minutes. Repeat the same for the sides too.

12. Serve hot with ketchup! ☺ ☻

As you can see, my crescents don't exactly look the same as Radhika's. But taste-wise, they were heavenly! If you do have an oven please bake in that! But this alternative is acceptable too!

If you are doubtful about making them, once again, take a look at how beautiful they look - :-D

 

And if you are wondering what the title was all about, I am holding a FUNERAL for my wonderful Philips OVEN who is no more! :'( If you wish to express your sympathy, you could send cakes as a token of your appreciation for my oven's long-standing services! :-D ☻