Saffron Road has been generous with me on the blog and has kept me well fed in several reviews as I've already covered several of their crunchy chickpeas snacks flavors. Now, they've started sending me some of their frozen food products to try out and that leads me to this review of the Saffron Road Chana Saag with Cumin Rice frozen entree. This one is eleven ounces of joy and clocks in at 420 calories and has twelve grams of protein. It's Certified Halal and in case you were wondering (because I was), Chana means chickpeas and Saag means spinach. There's our language lesson for the day.
Opening up the box of this presented me with the classic compartmentalized frozen entree with the Basmati rice on one side and the Chana Saag mixture on the other side. One thing of note was that there was a plethora of large chickpeas as well as a plethora of spinach. Another, perhaps more important, note was that as soon as I opened this package, I immediately smelled cumin which to me, is one of the most wonderful and underused spices that there is. Plus, I absolutely LOVE the smell of cumin, so the fact that the smell was so strong prior to me cooking this just made me giddy with anticipation. The Basmati rice itself was seasoned with cumin and that seasoning gave it a delightful smell, which made this rice slightly more than boring like one might expect if you just looked at it.
After heating this up, what I got was an entree of wonderful smelling steamed rice in one compartment and then a mixture of soft chickpeas, tomatoes, cream and softened spinach in the other compartment. The Chana Saag mixture itself reminded me of the guts of a Spanokopita, and yes I know that is an entirely different culture. With that, I mixed the two together and took my first mouthful and was delighted with what I encountered with the mix of cumin and garlic providing wonderful seasoning. The soft chickpeas broke up easily while chewing and while they didn't add a lot of flavor, they did a bit of "body" to the thin and wonderfully spiced spinach. The Basmati rice itself, while containing cumin, was not really distinguishable on its own in terms of flavor, but one mixed with the Chana Saag, it was downright excellent. One interesting thing of note was that when this entire package was mixed together, I would almost classify it's flavor as creamy and similar to a creamed spinach. I've always been a big creamed spinach guy, especially Boston Market's version, so I especially enjoyed that. And yes, I know I just compared this to yet another culture's food. Sue me. As for the spice of this, it was at a very low level and really the only spice at all came from the cumin and that was especially mild. So, if Indian food's spice scares you, do not fear this Chana Saag entree.
Buy It or Fly By It? I thoroughly enjoyed this frozen entree because of the wonderful taste of the strong cumin and it's rare for me to say I enjoy any frozen entree to the extent that I enjoyed this one, so this gets a BUY IT rating. If you see this one in the freezer aisle at your local grocery store, it's worth picking up.
BUY IT!! |
Sounds like something I would like.
ReplyDeleteI haven't ever been able to find Saffron Road products in any stores near me though.
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