Thursday, March 17, 2011

St. Patty's Day Aloo Saag

I didn't wear anything green today, and biking home in Boston, it seems that I may have been the only one. I decided to remedy this oversight, not by drinking green beer, but by eating something green and spicy. No hangovers here. Food coma? A little bit.

Aloo = potato, saag = greens. Another name for greens is palak, so sometimes this dish might be called aloo palak. Maybe one of the two more specifically implies spinach, which is what I would normally use to make this dish. When I got to the grocery store however, the swiss chard was difficult to pass by, so I decided to make a substitution.

I was also thinking that it would be nice to cook something a bit faster, so I kept track of the time as I went along. Here is the play by play:

7:18 pm
The ingredients have been assembled and I begin to chop the first set of items. I believe we can call these aromatics: a hunk of ginger, a few cloves of garlic, 1 onion, several green chile peppers.



7:23 pm
Heating a wide, deep pan, I drop in 2 tbsp of ghee, 2 tsp coriander seeds, and several curry leaves, frying until I hear a nice pop from the seeds.



7:24 pm
I let the aromatics sweat - meaning, I threw in the chopped onion, ginger, garlic, hot pepper, a little bit of salt, and covered to help things along. While things were sweating, I peeled 2 medium potatoes, and cut them into french fry-shaped chunks.

7:29 pm
I added the powdered spices (1 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp chile powder, 1 Tbsp cumin powder) and fried for another minute.

7:30 pm
Now I added the potatoes and a bit of salt. I fried the potatoes until they are just tender, adding a little bit of water as needed (I used some of the liquid whey left over from making the paneer the other day). While the potatoes were moving along, I washed and chopped the swiss chard.

7:40 pm
The potatoes are ready, adding the swiss chard. Covered, for a few minutes, stirring and adding a bit more salt.

7:45 pm
Heated up the leftover rice and the leftover paneer mushroom makhani.

7:50 pm
Eat!

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