Saag Casserole Failure
I attempted to make a saag casserole, and failed. I do think a saag casserole is possible, however, and maybe with some adjustment this approach will work. Here’s roughly what I tried:
Into the blender went lots of spinach, as well as white onion, a lonesome tomato, garlic cloves, a little milk, egg (in the hopes that they would cause the saag to bake into something a little more solid) and spices. The spices were a bit off-the-wall, because my curry collection has almost run out, and I had no fresh ginger. I used ground ginger, cumin, a little bit of a vindaloo spice mix, a dash of dahl spice mix, salt, black pepper, and I can’t remember what else.
It tasted like a mild saag in the blender, but I made a critical error: since this was to be baked for a bit and cooked with rice, it needed to start out quite a bit stronger.
Anyway, in the casserole dish, I made a layer of cooked rice, topped with a layer of whole spinach leaves and tempeh, topped with the blenderized sauce. That went into a 350-degree oven until it looked bubbly.
The sauce did not behave as I expected. The layer of spinach leaves prevented the solids from sinking down into the rice, but instead acted as a filter, letting the watery part of the sauce fall to the bottom, where it made the rice a little greenish and more mushy than desirable. The remaining sauce didn’t firm up as I hoped it would, but instead took on a slightly grainy texture, due perhaps to loss of liquid. The tempeh still tasted like tempeh, and I used too much rice. And the whole mess was as bland as cardboard, even to Chris.
Bummer.