This is a triumph!

I'm very fond of the spinach dish served in Indian restaurants as saag, or sometimes sag. I like it with meat, I like it with chickpeas, I like it with paneer (a soft white cheese). I've been trying to reproduce it for over a year, generally with limited success. A couple of weeks ago, while babysitting my cousins, I came across the cookbook From Mom with Love: The Complete Guide to Indian Cooking and Entertaining. And since I'm always looking for new saag recipes, I investigated, and found that it did indeed contain a recipe for saag paneer.

So, last week, armed with the recipe and bunch of our Henry Got Crops kale, I tried the new recipe. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the local food coop sells the spice mix garam masala, so I did not need to make it myself in dad's coffee grinder from bay leaves and cinnamon sticks and other hard spices. I made paneer with the guidance of this blog and a brief discussion with rumorofrain (my one comment on that page is that the first time I tried it I didn't realize that the milk needs to really get to a full, roiling boil, not just a halfhearted sort-of boil. Also, having actual cheesecloth really helps). My first attempt was quite satisfactory; the flavor was pretty close, and it both looked and smelled like the dish I was trying to reproduce, which is closer than I had gotten with anything else. It did, however, still taste rather strongly of kale, so on Friday I tried again with the second half of my homemade paneer and this week's CSA rainbow chard. And it was very good. My mother agreed. My one regret is that the chard was so pretty, it was rather a shame to blend it all. Today I tried feeding a lamb version made with beet greens to my famously vegetable-averse brother. And he liked it. He told me so. Furthermore, he ate three servings.

I think that this recipe has Arrived. So I will share it with all of you(  under the cut. )