Paneer tikka masala is a dish that adapts to every kitchen. When you find the dish in most restaurants it will be neatly served with fancy presentation and a side of rice or naan, a soft bread. Many North Indian dishes are known for “rich gravies and smoky tikkas” (“Regional”). The traditional version of paneer comes from North India and uses ingredients like greek yogurt, minced garlic, and butter (Desai). The result of these ingredients produces a creamier, milder dish. Southern India tends to cook paneer in “bold spices” (“Regional”). This is my family’s background and my mother’s recipe reflects those flavors: cream from her homemade yogurt with tempered mustard seeds, curry leaves, and dried red chillies to add spice to the flavor profile. There is an immediate hot sensation on your tongue that mellows out as you taste the slight creaminess from the yogurt. Then, you are left with a smoky finish from the tempered curry leaves. Your mouth salivates again just waiting for the next bite. A restaurant's version is very consistent in each bite, with a smooth texture, playing it very safe and guaranteeing automatic pleasure. The version that is close to home for me, on the other hand, isn’t made to perfection every time, isn’t consistent with its measurements, but always delivers a feeling no restaurant could ever match.

Many often think of Indian food as a single cuisine, as if every dish is just a variation of the same curry, but it is actually a combination of numerous regional cuisines that vary by state. The Economic Times  reports that many people ask: “What is Indian food, as a marker of a unique cultural identity? Is it simply the collation of different and diverse regional styles of cooking… or is there a thread of commonality that runs through the hyperlocal variations?” (Vishal). My mom’s paneer seems to be the answer to these questions. She takes a North Indian dish and amplifies it with South Indian ingredients, resulting in something that still feels authentic to my roots but carries flavors of both regions. There is even science behind why these variations in ingredients differ.A study analyzed over 2,500 recipes across eight different Indian regions and found that “each regional cuisine follows negative food pairing pattern; more the extent of flavor sharing between two ingredients, lesser their co-occurrence in that cuisine” (Jain et al.). This means that many cooks intentionally throw in opposite flavors together. This is exactly what I have noticed in my mom’s cooking; the ingredients of cool yogurt and spicy dried red chillies clash on paper but somehow pair beautifully together. Indian food builds flavor through distinct contrasts, which is why I personally believe any home cooked version carries a depth that a standardized paneer curry cannot imitate.