Post 102: Chicken Saag and Aloo Gobi curry

Having both spinach from the veg box and chicken from sunday's planned for but too cold to do it BBQ, then there was only one option: a mighty chicken saag. Which is my staple going out order and the one by which I judge and new curry emporia that I grace.

I followed a recipe, adapting it to the quantities of ingredients I had in:
- 1/4 kilo chicken
- 1 bag of saag

I started by frying two medium chopped onions, to which I added about 3 cloves of garlic, 1tsb each of tumeric, cayenne pepper, coriander powder and garam masala - and then an extra one of garam just to make sure. For heat I added one long finger chilli and half a scotch bonnet. As prescribed by the recipe the chicken was cooked in a little milk to keep it soft. I then added two big tomatoes, which were very roughly chopped and the spinach and left to simmer on down. No further liquid needed to be added.

This was possibly the best most restaurant-esque curry I've ever cooked! I really should start using a proper camera instead of the one on my phone - the chicken saag was beautifully bright green and it really was a most attractive looking curry. I realise my claim of curry-lovelyness could be disputed from the pale greeny sludge looking photo I've presented, but it was gran I tell ya!

Now I knew that 1/4 a kilo's worth of meat curry wouldn't be enough to satisfy the 4 hungry horaces. So, looking in the box, I pulled out:
- Two medium onions
- A cauliflower
- 6 potaotes
- A snallish acorn squash
- And a handful of mushrooms

As ever starting with frying the onions, I then added spices in this case: 1 finger chilli, 1/2 a scotch bonnet and 3 dried chillis, some mustard seeds, paprika, curry powder and cumin. I then added some stock and this all looked a bit watery and pale so I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and simmered it until all the veg were good and mushy and the sauce had gone gloopy.

I was fairly happy with the result, the extra chillis made this a pretty lively little number and for an hour's worth of cooking I didn't think these two dishes were at all a bad result.

After these two, and sunday's roast chicken I find myself in the very strange position of thinking I'm about to run out of veg, instead of trying to think what I'm going to do with it.