First you must make the Saag, or spinach sauce (and there’s a great variation too using kale and rainbow chard): Saag/Palak
Ingredients:
Saag/Palak (click to see the recipe)
Chicken or Shrimp (See below for a Seafood Option)
Garlic (chopped or smashed)
Celtic Sea Salt
Cayenne Pepper
Butter or Ghee or Coconut Oil
Black Rice
Directions
First make your Palek and let it sit in the fridge overnight.
Then, in the afternoon, make up some black rice. Why black rice? Why in the afternoon?
Black Rice is rich in antioxidants and high in fiber so it won’t spike your blood sugar. Additionally, if cooked early and served at room temperature, it contains resistant starch. Simply the Best carries this simply because it is our favorite and we use it in all our recipes and many of our readers can’t find it: Simply the Best.
Then, when your family is ready to sit down, warm up your favorite Indian bread in the oven. If you don’t bake bread and there’s no Indian bakery near you, you can probably find Stonefire® Tandoor Baked Naan in a local grocery store. Sure, it contains wheat and many people are wheat sensitive, but if you’re not, heck, have a little fun.
When you’ve got the ingredients ready, this takes less than fifteen minutes, so have all your other dishes ready to go.
Melt the butter (or ghee; it’s more traditional), add some crushed or chopped garlic, and then start frying up your chicken or shrimp (or beef or pork, and if you want to get really decadent, try frying up bacon ends (just remove all the fat when cooked)). The chicken should be cut into inch squares and the shrimp should be de-tailed and cut in half. While frying, you can sprinkle in a bit cayenne pepper (depending on taste). When this is 95% cooked, pour in your Saag/Palek gloop and cover the chicken/shrimp and continue stirring till the whole things starts to bubble.
Dish out over your black rice and enjoy. This is soooooo amazingly delicious. Oh, and it’s very healthy too.
Seafood Option
Ok, we did this and we ended up with the tastiest darn meal we’ve ever had, bar none. (It was so good, she proposed to me three times during the meal).
And it’s very simple. Get lots of seafood. We got shrimp (de-veined and peeled), scallops (we cut them in half) or sea scallops (much smaller, no need to cut them in half), clams (uncooked), calamari (rings and tentacles), and crab.
If you can’t find crab legs, or crab meat, go ahead and use the fake crab. (Purists reading this have just called for an ambulance.) I prefer the real thing, and it just takes minutes to boil them up. (Never order crab legs at Red Lobster. They over-cook them and you can tie them in knots.)
The shrimp and the scallops must be cooked in butter (or ghee or coconut oil) and, again, you can sprinkle in some cayenne pepper to taste. Once they’re 95% cooked, you can add the clams, calamari, and crab (since they really don’t need to be cooked, just warmed up) along with the sauce. Bring to a small boil, stir up and serve over black pearl rice. This is to die for. But it’s so damn healthy, you really don’t have to die.
One More Option
At our co-op I found “bacon ends.” It, like the bacon there, is uncured. I took it home thinking it might make a nice addition to the Saag, and I was not disappointed. I poured off the fat, kept what was left, added the “green sauce” and it was truly decadent.