Chola Palak with Ginger and Kale
/In a frying pan, dry toast some cumin seeds and black mustard seeds. After a couple minutes, add some rapeseed oil, a few thinly sliced shallots or small onions and sauté for about 5 minutes on medium-high heat.
When the onions begin to brown and cook down, add some sliced garlic cloves, sliced red chilli and a big chunk of ginger cut into matchsticks. Sauté everything for another 5 minutes or so.
Drain and rinse a can of chickpeas and add to the frying pan. Stir well, adding some salt and a generous scoop of turmeric. Lower the heat and allow everything to sizzle a bit, but make sure nothing burns too much.
While the chickpeas are sizzling, use a nutribullet or food processor to blitz up a few massive handfuls of spinach, kale, a splash of water and some tomato puree. (If you don’t want to use a food processor or just don’t have one, roughly but finely chop the spinach and kale and bash up and bruise it with a spoon or mortar and pestle. Transfer to a small pot, add the water and tomato puree and warm gently until the spinach and kale has wilted, stir to make a ‘rustic’ puree.) It shouldn’t be perfectly pureed, just blitzed up a bit as if you’ve made a really thick spinach smoothie.
Transfer the spinach and kale into the pan with the chickpeas, onions, garlic, ginger and chillies. Lower the heat to minimum, or turn off the heat completely and gently fold in the spinach until it’s fully wilted and darkened in colour.
Serve with plenty of lime and fresh coriander!
