If you are new to Punjabi cooking, you will find deliciously rich, creamy meals reminiscent of the most delicious comfort foods. While many of these dishes are drenched in ghee, a type of clarified butter, others utilize yogurt for their creamy texture. We used Greek style yogurt in our Punjabi chicken recipe. Greek style yogurt is thicker than American style yogurt, and if you have never had it before, it is slightly more bitter. This gave us the room to create a creamy dish without loading it too much up on saturated fat but giving it a good boost in protein.

We cut our chicken into four-inch pieces. Pieces of any other size may affect the cook time, so try to keep these chunks uniform. The chiles Jeff used were the serrano, but any hot chile could be substituted. He suggests jalepeno if you don’t have serranos on hand. This is an interesting looking dish because you think it’s going to have more tomato flavor and red coloring, but then it turns green when you add the spinach to it. The color is cool. Our taste testers liked this recipe, they said that it smelled especially fragrant and that the scent translated into the flavor quite nicely. It was a welcome new twist to eating chicken.

We served our Punjabi chicken with basmati rice, which is indigenous to the Punjab region, and na’an bread. Be sure to remove the cardamom seeds, the bay leaves, and the cinnamon stick before serving. They are there for adding flavor, not for eating, and you really don’t want to have to take anyone to the dentist after chipping a tooth on a cinnamon stick.

Makes 4 servings.