FOOD & DRINK FLASH IN THE PAN
TURNING FROZEN SPINACH INTO AN INDIAN DELIGHT BY ARI LEVAUX
I
have been celebrating the arrival of spring with helpings of palak paneer, an Indian dish of spinach and homemade cheese. The spinach, puréed, has a thrilling flavor thanks to ginger, serrano peppers and Indian spices. This green sauce envelops the sweet, nutty cheese, creating a contrast that’s almost as lovely as it is delicious. Frozen spinach is in season too, as food processors must clear freezer space to accommodate the new crop and liquidate last year’s leftovers. The same principle applies to many vegetables. During corn season, look for a sale on frozen corn.
I know that freezer technology has come a long way, but years of trauma are complicated to undo. Standing in the frozen vegetable section, I shook a bag of spinach, and I could feel a loose mass of irregularly shaped material inside. I imagined ice
crystals and freezer-burnt spinach and did not have a good feeling about it, but my recipe called for frozen spinach, so I was going to go for it. At home, I was happy to see bright green, frost-free nuggets of rolled spinach. Palak paneer is often mistaken for saag paneer, a popular Indian restaurant dish. The difference is that saag paneer can contain mustard greens and other greens like radish and turnip, in addition to spinach, while palak paneer contains only spinach. It is a dish you might find anywhere in India, which means there are variations. I can’t say I’ve tried them all, but I would if I could. Of those I have tried, my favorite comes from the blog Feasting at Home. It uses cashews, which add a subtle but rich creaminess, and it calls for frozen spinach—but notes you can also use fresh.
Freezing cooks the spinach in a way, so all you have to do is thaw it in the hot pan in the sautéed flavorings, and then we don’t have to wait for it to cool down before it goes into the blender. And who wants to cook and blend a bunch of baby spinach? But if you are inundated with more spinach than you can handle from your garden or CSA, go for it. While you’re at it, make a big batch and freeze the leftovers, with or without cheese, and save it for later. But if your spinach is limited, save the fresh spinach for raw use, and make palak paneer with frozen spinach. The paneer, aka Indian cheese, is delicious and surprisingly easy to make. You get a grapefruit-sized ball of paneer from a gallon of milk, and you press the ball into a disc and then cut into cubes, which some cooks fry in ghee (clarified butter) before adding to the palak. A certain innocence is lost upon frying, but a distinct crunchiness is gained. Whether or not to fry the paneer cubes is a personal choice. Unfried paneer is cloudlike, softer and decidedly creamier than fried, and it blends blissfully with the creamy spinach sauce unhindered by hard boundaries. The fried cheese, meanwhile, is stiffer, nuttier, sweeter and of course crunchier, like a dense, chewy mascarpone with an exoskeleton. I’ve modified the recipe, as surely the blog’s author Sylvia Fountaine did to the recipe from wherever she got it. Compliments to whoever added the cashews.
Ari LeVaux has written about food for The Atlantic Online, Outside Online and Alternet.
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