Saag aloo

By sidecars

Imagine potatoes, some pleasingly crispy at the edges, draped with strings of tastily spiced spinach. You can't see the tasty spices in the photo, of course, but trust me, the balance is just right. This makes a tasty accompaniment to other vegetable or meat curries or will spice up a blander meal. It would work well as a pot-luck item if you had friends with a taste for the exotic and it's very frugal.

The one thing I did find out though is that this dish, so common in Indian restaurants in the the UK, is not that well-known in India. Just call it fusion cooking. The recipe, by the way, is a combined effort from several I found on various internet searches. It's very, very easy and fairly quick - it'll be cooking in under 10 minutes.

Ingredients

• Ingredients for 4:
• 300 g / 10 oz frozen spinach (ideally leaf spinach but chopped will work), defrosted but NOT drained
• 5 large potatoes, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp medium curry powder
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 tbsp vegetable or other bland oil

Details

Servings 4
Adapted from slowcookedinblighty.blogspot.com

Preparation

Step 1

Fry the onion in the oil for 5 minutes until it goes translucent. Add the spices to the pan and cook until the fragrances rise from the pan - this is when the oils in the spices start to be released. Then throw everything into the slow cooker. It's important you don't drain the spinach as this is just the amount of liquid you need.

As well as being easy and frugal, this was really delicious. The potatoes around the edge were just getting a little crispy but were still moist inside, the flavours were nicely balanced and it was very popular with our dinner guests who all have different tastes. Even my toddler liked it when I reheated it the next day with some scrambled eggs. Yummy! The one thing I would say is that I would think you would need to double the spices to make it taste the way it does in Indian restaurants - although balanced, they weren't as punchy as I had expected. That's just trial and error for you, though.