Chole Palak

Yesterday was my second shipment from the CSA (woo hoo another dozen eggs!!).

This time it included a whole bunch of spinach so I thought it'd be good to do something with it right away. Chole = chic peas, palak = spinach (not that I speak Hindi though...). I feel like at this point if you've read any of the past posts here, that is about all I need to say to explain the recipe. But just in case there are any late night bacon fans out there, I will go into the details.

One thing to note is that there can be quite a bit of variety on which aromatics and which spices you use. This time I only had some garlic and hot pepper (no onions or ginger) so I did without. I also skipped the usual curry leaves, and opted for some cumin seeds and the usual powdered spices. Here is more or less how it happened:

I also decided to experiment with the beets I got. I tried treating them like potatoes. Peeled, cubed, cumin seed fried with ghee, then some garlic and hot pepper. My roommate said the sweetness of the beets was rather in conflict with the heat and saltiness that I introduced, but I enjoyed it. Don't typecast the beets.

And now for listener mailbag!! Some good friends in Chicago made their own rendition of aloo saag (using spinach here rather than swiss chard which is a bit more proper), and it looked pretty delicious! Thanks guys!