The best part about saag is the first splutter of cumin or mustard seeds crackling in lugs of clarified butter. The golden pool of ghee melts away and absorbs the woodiness of the spices that it then translates onto the greens that will soon come rolling down. But all that is about to change as we talk about vegan saag.
Indian cuisine plays with a variety of saags (a Hindi word for greens). The queen is sarson or mustard, a North Indian variety that hits the market mainly during winters and pairs best with maize flour rotis. There is nutrition-loaded cholai or amaranth greens that I like to load up on thanks to its vitamin-rich mineral content. In Kashmir, they eat haak; a little lower, in Kumaoni cuisine, bichu buti or stinging nettle rules the roost, while the cuisine of Andhra Pradesh turns gongura (red sorrel) into a stir fry, curry, pickle, and everything in between. In North East India, you’ll find mosundori (fish mint) and tita mora (jute plant), all this while the ubiquitous palak (spinach) literally finds a way in most Indian cuisines.
“I grew up eating sarson ka saag cooked in a Punjabi-style and love the Kashmiri haak as much,” says Chef Romy Gill, cookbook author of Zaika: Vegan Recipes From India.
The interesting thing about saags is that they are more or less cooked similarly, dropped in a tempering until they wilt away in a morning-glory-in-an-Asian-stir-fry kind of a way, or pulverized and served with cubes of meat, vegetables, or cottage cheese.
But Chef Gill learned how to adapt saag into vegan ways, focusing instead on the flavors of the greens versus the richness of dairy or meat that goes into them. Here’s her take on the classic Indian palak paneer.
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May 14, 2021 at 07:32PM
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Weekend Project: Make Indian Saag Into a Vegan Dish With a Few Easy Steps - Thrillist
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