Sacrilege in the Kitchen

I've got a long streak of good luck in trying new recipes. I decided to try a new Indian recipe. Since saag (a spinach dish) is one of my favorite foods, I was really excited to give it a whirl. Now, most people know saag from Indian restaurants as saag paneer, where paneer is an Indian cheese. I realized that I was probably not going to take the effort to make the cheese and didn't have the money to buy some cheese, so I decided to buy some meat from the local butcher. Most butchers just sell beef, so I bought a half kilo and cooked up the sacred animal of the vast majority of India to put into an Indian dish. Also, I rarely cook meat these days, but we just got a new cleaver, so I was really happy to put that to use. (Thanks Becca, Mario, Arfa, Bina, Colin, David, Fareeha, Shavi and Vanessa!)

So, the recipe called for a lot of butter, for which I substituted a healthy amount of oil, a bit of margarine and some coconut milk. It actually worked out really well. I mean, not for our arteries, of course. But the coconut milk gave it a nice creamy quality and mixed really well with the spices. Mixing some kale with the spinach also worked out nicely. And the tomato, onion and carrot gave it some nice color.

Oh, and after attempt #2 and #3 to make falafel were rather unsuccessful, I am proud to report that Jodie and I made some delicious falafel on Monday night as we watched Mean Girls.