Chicken Saag

If you're not familiar with this Indian dish, the above picture may look a little ... uh, scary. If you're the type of person who won't try guacamole because it's green and icky looking, then you should just move on. Nothing to see here (and I hope you enjoy your dinner of bologna and spaghetti O's). If you're not a wuss, you should definitely make this dish.

We eat Indian food as often as possible (there is a good place in Anchorage with a great lunch buffet so you can try a little of everything) and Chicken Saag is one of our favorite dishes.

I'd never attempted to make this before last night and I sincerely doubted that it would be anything like as good as what we get in the restaurants. I was just hoping for good enough. What I got was spectacular! Better than the restaurant version and not hard at all to make. I found two recipes online that I mostly liked, blended them together to get what sounded right to me, and this is what I came up with:

2 Tbs coconut oil 1 large onion

3 tsp minced garlic 2 Tbs grated ginger

2 lbs chicken, cubed 1 cup lowfat plain yogurt

1 cup heavy cream 2 lbs frozen spinach (thawed and squeezed)

SPICES:

2 tsp cumin 1 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper 1/4 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp allspice or nutmeg 2 tsp salt

1 tsp cardamom 2 bay leaves

1/4 tsp garam masala

It looks like a lot of ingredients, but really it's mostly spices. I couldn't even find garam masala (which is a mix of spices and every brand is a different blend) so I just used a mild curry blend which I already had. The only spice I didn't already own was the cardamom, so this was not a very expensive meal for me to make, but it could be if you didn't own any of the spices.

So you'll heat the oil over medium-high and add bay leaves and diced onion. Cook for about 5 minutes.

Add the garlic, ginger and all of the spices except the garam masala (or curry blend). Stir well, add the meat and fry for 2 - 3 minutes. Slowly stir in the yogurt and cream, then add the spinach. Cover and simmer on low for about an hour, stirring occasionally.

Add garam masala and turn the heat up and cook, stirring constantly until most of the liquid from the spinach is evaporated.

Remove the bay leaves and serve.

With all of that heavy cream, I was a little worried about the calories here, so we did some quick math and came up with a rough estimate. It comes out to somewhere just under 500 calories for a 2 cup serving. That's in the high range for me calorie wise, but 2 cups is a large serving and this is really rich. I couldn't finish the whole thing. Manbeast did (of course) but he was pretty full. No snacking after this dinner!