Indian spinach recipes (Saag, Palak)

HeidiCooksSupper

Looking for new ways to incorporate a bag of spinach into your healthy meals, a wander via Google for Indian recipes using spinach will pull up lots of great alternatives. Two common words that mean spinach are "saag" and "palak."

Tonight, we had a side dish of Palak Aloo, spinach and potatoes. There are many recipes online, many of them quite quick and easy.

Basically, cook cubed potatoes until almost done, add some indian spices, add chopped spinach, and cook until done. Each recipe is a little different and you can adjust to fit what you have in the house. For example, we can't eat onions or tomatoes so ours didn't have those items in it.

Tonight's recipe:
-In a wok or heavy pan, heat butter and canola oil over medium-high heat.
-Add skin-on red potatoes, cut in 1/2 dice.
-Add 2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger, 1 tsp. ground cumin, 1 tsp. yellow curry powder, and 1/2 teaspoon asefoetida.
-Finely chop the spinach in the food processor.
-When the potatoes are almost fully cooked (about 10 minutes), add the spinach and saute for 2 to 3 minutes.
-Add 1/2 cup Greek yogurt, juice of 1/2 a lemon and stir. If the mixture seems exceptionally thick, add a bit of unsweetened almond milk to loosen.

You may use any potato you prefer, cut the spinach coarse or fine, change the spices, add tomatoes, onions, and garlic, etc. Skip the yogurt and add paneer (an Indian cheese that resembles well-drained ricotta), Steam or boil the potatoes and use potato water instead of milk to loosen the final mixture, etc.

Of course, the nutritional values depend on how you make the recipe but spinach is a very good-for-you veg.

mockchoc

Sounds great! Thanks.