Saag chicken stew

Dinner in a hurry. No time to stop and think.

All that sat in my head was coconut rice with something hot, something with chilies.

Inspired by a recipe from Hot! Hot! Hot!, fresh from London and spurred on by Lakshmi of Kitchen Chronicles and Sunita of Sunita’s world, I decided this would be my contribution, chilie-lover that I am.

I greatly adapted the recipe – it was a mutton stew and I made a chicken version. It had no potatoes in it but I decided mine would be nice with it. I only had vanilla yogurt at home and I used yellow cherry tomatoes, left over from a few days ago. All in all it turned out FAB, I’m glad to say so here’s my version

So here’s the recipe but first, to find out more about chilies, you can read a how to I put together on deseeding chilies and more.

Now to what you need to feed 4

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon butter or ghee

1 large onion, grated

1 tablespoon grated ginger

2 cloves garlic, smashed

1 teaspoon tumeric powder

3 cardamom pods, pounded to split open (don’t let the seeds get away)

1 whole cinnamon stick or 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 chicken breast, chopped into blocks

2 potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes

100ml greek or turkish yoghurt (though plain or soy yoghurt would do)

8 cherry tomatoes

150 ml Water

300 g spinach (I used frozen)

1 coriander cube or 2 tablespoons chopped coriander/cilantro

2 red chilies, split (you can also deseed them but I wanted them whole, for photo effects)

Slices of yellow chilies (optional)

Salt to taste

How to

Put oil and butter in a large pan on low – medium heat

Once melted, add onions, ginger, garlic, tumeric, cardamom and cinnamon. Stir and let them simmer gently till their aroma starts to surround you

Add chopped chicken and potatoes. I should have let them brown but like I said,I was starving…hence no step-by-step photos!

Let cook for a few minutes then add yoghurt and stir well to combine.

Add the tomatoes, water, spinach and cilantro (fresh or frozen). Stir well and salt.

Add chilies. Stir well and simmer covered for 1/2 an hour, checking regularly

If you feel the need to adjust the water, yoghurt or anything else…go with the flow

When it was ready, I found it a bit thin so I crushed some (not all) of the potatoes and ended up with a nice thick sauce

Then I garnished it with the chilies

It was delicious and not at all hot with the red chilies so I added a bit of yellow chilies for some heat!

More suggestions

Perfect with Coconut rice (basically rice cooked in coconut milk)

Banana-yoghurt dip (Banana mashed with yoghurt)

and even

A quick Masala Chai , without a chai wallah (street vendors). ‘Chai’ in India means tea…and a Masala chai – spiced tea, with the same spices as you use for a curry but with a different spin!

Enjoy and I promise, I’ll finish Part 2 of my London post, someday soon.

Oh, the writers of the recipe thought it tasted better the day after…and I still have some more to try, maybe at breakfast! :-)[wpurp-searchable-recipe]Saag chicken stew – – – [/wpurp-searchable-recipe]