Palak Chicken

My husband made this delicious palak chicken the other day. I love palak, especially when it is cooked with either chicken or mutton. It transforms a simple chicken/mutton curry to a remarkable confluence of taste, texture and aroma. If you use pureed spinach, the curry will acquire a buttery smoothness. If you use thinly chopped spinach, the result will be more rustic and with slightly bitter undertones, which marries so well with your slightly sweet-and-tangy tomato-onion-ginger-garlic masala. 

I personally like mutton saagwala the best but because red meat is a no-no, the next best option is chicken. One little trick that I learnt from my dad was to add tandoori chicken to any kind of saag. The reason why this trick works so beautifully is because the chicken has been spiced, salted and grilled to perfection already. You add it to your bhuna masala and palak, and voila, its just magic. It gives that super bhuna flavour to the dish which may be lacking if you put raw chicken into the masala. I feel like the spinach should ideally cook for hours with the meat to make the perfect saagwala chicken, but since chicken is delicate, the tandoori chicken can add that bhuna flavour and aroma without excessive bhunaoing.

So what do you like to eat with your Palak chicken? Rice or roti or parantha.