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Spinach is a fantastic vegetable, rich in lots of marvellous vegetably goodness, and very tasty to boot. This is a great way of serving it as a side dish to a curry.
The big problem with spinach is it's uncooked bulk - really you want a 1/2 pound to a pound of spinach per person for this dish, which is an awful lot of spinach in it's raw form if you are cooking for several people.
This recipe works very well with frozen spinach, which is just as nice as the fresh and is much easier to work with - I'd recommend using frozen.
For the chillies, I'd use a couple of green birds eye chillies and take the seeds out. This dish works best at it's hottest, but obviously do it to your taste. If you get those big chillies often found in supermarkets then either put in one with the seeds intact or put in several de-seeded ones. Their strength can be variable though, so be prepared for either disappointment or scorched lips.
This is adapted from a recipe in the awesome Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible. The original recipe is Kenyan, I think.
Ingredients
Makes 2 servings
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 small onion
- 3 spring onions
- spinach, 1lb fresh or a handful of frozen blocks
- green chillies
- good quality salt, ideally Maldon sea salt
- some oil, groundnut oil is best although olive works too
Preparation
If you got frozen spinach you want to defrost if first. Stick it all in a microwavable bowl and nuke it till it's mostly defrosted.
Put some oil in a lidded pan big enough for all that spinach, and put it on a medium heat. If your spinach is fresh you need a gigantic saucepan.
Crush the garlic. You really don't want to be slicing the garlic for this recipe, so either use a garlic press or squish it with a knife. A press really is best. Put the garlic in the pan and fry it.
Chop the onion, chillies and spring onion. Wait until the garlic has gone brown. Cook it much further than you might be used to - you want that nearly-burnt taste. Then chuck in the chopped onions and chillies and leave them to soften. Give them the odd stir to stop them sticking or burning.
If you are using fresh spinach you need to shred it now. I've not managed to find a good way of shredding several pounds of spinach - everything I've tried has resulted in spinach going everywhere. Good luck.
Once the onion and chillies have all softened, put in the spinach and a good bit of salt.
Give it a good stir, put the lid on and turn the heat down. Let it all cook together 10m if the spinach was frozen or 15m if fresh.
Take the lid off and cook on a low heat for another few minutes - you are looking to drive off any visible liquid, but not to dry it out too much.
That's it, serve with something equally hot and some rice or bread. Lovely.
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