Palak or saag, chicken, beef or lamb?

I've got a bunch of spinach that will go off if I don't use it soon, so I thought I would make an Indian spinach and chicken curry. I could have done it with beef as well but thought I would choose chicken. And I thought I would research it a little bit and found a couple of interesting things, though not quite what I thought I would find.

First of all - it's not like researching a dish like quiche lorraine, which tends to have lots of experts expounding on its history and what makes a real quiche lorraine, what should be in it, what shouldn't. And of course there will be variations but they tend not to be terribly different - the quintessential things that make a quiche lorraine - eggs, cream, bacon, remain the same. It's just quantities, method and little twists that vary.

Not so, it seems to me, with Indian food. I found four different recipes in my own library and they were all pretty different. I think I can safely say the only thing they had in common was the chicken and the spinach. The spices varied - although admittedly two of them seemed to have cloves and cardamom pods which are not that common in a lot of my Indian recipes. Some of them had tomatoes, or tomato purée, some did not. Some had yoghurt, some did not. So there really doesn't seem to be a 'classic' recipe. Well not in my collection. And not on the net either.

The other thing that confused me was the use of the words saag and palak. Now when we go out to Indian restaurants (let's be honest - these days we generally only go to Haveli), they seem to use both words. There are dishes like palak paneer and lamb saag on nearly all of their menus. At first I thought it might be a difference in the language used. India, after all, has hundreds of different languages - maybe, I thought, saag was from one language and palak from another. So I looked it up. And no they are not from different languages. Palak means spinach and saag is a more generic word for greens - which could include spinach. So whatever I cook tonight is going to be palak something.

Then chicken or beef or lamb? If this was a European dish there would be rules about what meat to use. I know, that in Indian restaurants, you can get a spinach and something dish, in which the something seems to be whatever you fancy - chicken, beef, lamb, fish, shellfish, cheese, potatoes, cauliflower ... But I guess I just assumed this was the Indians generously pandering to our western palates. But no it does seem that there are all of these things in Indian cuisine.

So what to do? Shall I follow a recipe - and if so, which one? Or shall I make up my own version, based on one of the four I have. I think I'll go with the latter. That way I'll be able to throw in a few leftovers too. It'll be fun.