Quick Paleo Chicken in Spiced Spinach Sauce
As all the Indians are going to call me out on this anyway, let me start by clarifying, yes, chicken in spiced spinach sauce is really palak chicken, but I just felt like making it sound all pretentious and hence the title. Now that the confession is out of the way let’s move to the story of how this quick dish came about.
Every so often you cook something that backfires so badly that it is beyond salvageable and that happened to me last week. We are trying to eat a primarily paleo diet at home for the month of August and so I had made paleo BBQ chicken salad for lunch. Homemade BBQ sauce, pineapple for sweetness, a splash of the vinegar my sister had infused with chive blossom, mmm... I made it, tasted it and it was delish! I couldn’t wait to eat it for lunch the next day. Fast forward about 27 hours and I dug into my salad and all I tasted was this pasty thing. Which was weird, I hadn’t added any mushy ingredients, hmm. Take another bite and was still getting that weird mushy, pasty texture. Upon further exploration of my salad I discovered the pasty texture was the chicken! What had happened was the vinegar and pineapple juices had continued to tenderize the cooked shredded BBQ chicken and what was left was something pretty close to chicken spread…. really weird texture. It was horrid. I thought of all the ways I could possibly salvage it, but it really was beyond rescue and so I had to just get rid of it (thank goodness my mum wasn’t around to see all that salad I was wasting)
So now I had nothing for lunch the next day. As I was thinking about what I can make quickly, I heard the doorbell ring, it was the chicken I had ordered online being delivered (I order my meat and poultry from this awesome online grocery delivery service: YourBoxCanada). Looked in my fridge, spinach, coriander, green chillies… I didn’t have much choice than to make palak chicken. If you like the more popular palak dish, palak paneer, then you are going to love this chicken. I started cooking this at 9pm and was in no mood to cut up stuff, especially not onions, hello blendtec. Here’s how it all came together.
Ingredients: (Yields 4 Servings)
1 lb boneless chicken, cut into small pieces *
1 tbsp coconut oil (or any cooking oil)
2 dried red chillies
1 bay leaf
salt, as needed
3/4 tsp garam masala
3/4 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 tbsp kasoori methi (dried fenugreek leaves)**
3 large cloves garlic
3/4 inch piece ginger
1 medium tomato
1 small onion
2 - 4 small green chillies (depends on how spicy you want it)
1 bag of spinach (approx. 250 grams)
1/4 bunch coriander leaves (approx. 100 grams)
1 date, soaked
1 cup of water
2 tbsp thick coconut milk***
Heat oil in a pan over medium heat
Break the dried red chillies into half and add it into the hot oil along with the bay leaf
Add the chicken, salt, garam masala, coriander powder, cumin powder, turmeric powder, chilli powder and half of the kasoori methi
Mix well and let the chicken cook for about 5 minutes
In the meantime grind together garlic, ginger, tomato, onion and green chilies adding about a quarter cup water to get it smooth
After about 5 minutes add the ground onion mixture to the chicken mix well and let it cook for another 5 minutes
While the chicken is cooking, blanch the spinach and grind it along with the coriander leaves, deseeded soaked date and the remaining 3/4 cup of water.
After the chicken and onion mix have been cooking for 5 minutes, add the spinach mixture and mix well, taste for salt and spice, adding more as needed and let it cook together uncovered for 10-12 minutes. (leaving the pan uncovered gives a vibrant green colour)
Mix in coconut milk and the remaining kasoori methi and remove from heat
I garnished with some chopped cilantro and ate it with some paleo rotis, yum!
* I use boneless chicken thighs, but you can use chicken breast as well.
** If you cannot find dried fenugreek leaves, celery leaves are a good way to get similar flavour
*** Feel free to use cream if you are not trying to make it dairy free
