Saag is a dish made with green leaves, probably more familiar to many with spinach, but actually can be many others, such as mustard leaves (mustard is actually a brassica, so related to cabbage, kale, etc.), broccoli - flower and leaves, or pretty much any edible green. The key thing is the green, because that is what colours this vibrant green dish.
Saag paneer (with Indian cottage cheese) and saag aloo (with potato) are familiar enough vegetarian options on an Indian takeaway menu in Ireland. I just checked my usual takeaway app and of the nine restaurants in the Indian category, only one did not have at least one of them, and seven had both. The one that didn’t have either, did have a meat saag dish. Others had even more saag options, such as saag chana, with chickpeas, or, the subject of this recipe, saag mushroom.
The saag part of this recipe is fairly standard. Whole spices + aromatics + dried spices + spinach, then liquidised to create a green spicy sauce. This can be used with pretty much any other ingredient to create a delicious dinner. We are using mushrooms here, but firm tofu cubes (replacing paneer!), chickpeas, other beans, whatever you like!
The method I use for the mushrooms here creates a really tasty mushroom! It is similar to a recent video from SauceStache, where he boiled sliced mushrooms dry and then added oil to fry them. Here I use whole mushrooms, and don’t quite get to frying them, and it works great. Not very different to the method I used with the sautéed potatoes recently.
Ingredients:
1 medium onion, rough chopped
1 thumb sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 birdseye chillis, chopped. (If you want, take out the seeds to reduce the heat)
1 green bell pepper, chopped into small chunks
1 red bell pepper, chopped into small chunks
3 good handfuls of spinach - about 100g
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp green cardamom seeds, or 8 green cardamom pods, slightly crushed.
1 tsp mild chilli powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp fenugreek powder
1 tsp garam masala powder
1 + 1/2 tsp salt
100ml non-dairy milk
Worth noting that you can buy the cardamom seeds separate from the cardamom pods, though you may have to search around (I get them from Asia Market). You can just crush the pods and throw them in, but if you don’t have the seeds then I will recommenf to take the time to extract them from the pods to add to sauces like this. I love the flavour that much!
Put a couple of tablespoons of oil into a pan. Add the cumin seeds, mustard seeds and cardamom into the oil and turn on the stove to medium-high.
Once the seeds start to sizzle and pop, add in the onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion visibly softens and starts to look translucent. The add in the ginger, garlic and chopped chillis and cook for another minute.
Add in the chopped bell peppers and keep cooking for a couple of minutes, stirring once or twice, until the whole dish is really sizzling. Then put in the powdered spices and the 1 teaspoon of salt and stir until all the veggies are coated.
Place the spinach on top of the other veggies and then put a lid on the pan. Leave it for a couple of minutes to heat the spinach and let it begin to wilt. Now, pour in a cup of water and stir well. Once the water comes to the boil, take the pot off the heat and set aside to cool for a few minutes.
Rinse the mushrooms in cold water. Cut the hard ends of the mushroom stalks. Place them in a large non-stick pan with enough water to cover about half the height of the mushrooms. Put in 1/2 teaspoon of salt and put on a lid. Turn on the heat to high and bring the water to the boil. Leave for 10 minutes with the lid on - this step really releases a lot of the mushroom flavour into the water - the remove the lid to allow the water to boil off.
Meanwhile, put the spinach mix into a blender and blend until smooth. It should look quite green. This is your saag sauce.
When the water has almost fully boiled off, turn down the heat to low and then pour in the saag sauce and stir well. Leave on a low heat while you prep some rice or naan or chipatis - whatever you like yourself.
Just before serving, stir in the non-dairy milk (or non-dairy cream!).