©Ashy 2002
home recipe linksSamosas are easy but rather time consuming. Add to that the fact that people tend to eat them as soon as you've made them and it hardly seems worth it. Every time I get round to making some, however, I realise it is definitely worth it and I wonder why I don't do it more often.
The most difficult thing about this recipe is rolling out the dough and folding up the parcels. If you can find someone to help you it will be a lot easier, but make sure it's someone you can trust not to mess it up. If the parcels aren't wrapped up properly, the filling will get out and the cooking oil will get in - yukky samosas.
We'll do this in two stages. First the fillings, then the dough.
Fillings
These can be made the day before and kept in the fridge. When you cook the vegetables, remember they will cook a little more inside the samosas so don't overdo it. You can use them raw if you prefer a crispy filling - it's up to you, but the fillings must be cold when you make the samosas. Here are some suggestions:
Spinach paneer
Steam and chop some spinach and mix with some paneer cut into small (1 cm) cubes and some salt, red chilli and a little nutmeg or garam massala.
Cauliflower and potato
Steam some cauliflower and boil a few potatoes. Cut the cauliflower into tiny florets (chop the pieces of stem up finely too). Cut the potato into 1 cm cubes. Fry a little onion in the smallest amount of oil with some mustard or cumin seed. Mix together with a little turmeric powder, ginger, salt and red chilli.
Potato and peas
Cut cooked potato into 1 cm cubes, or use mashed potato. Mix with some green peas, a few dry roasted fennel seeds, salt and chilli powder.
You can see I like my samosas spicy. Try your own combinations. The vegetables should be cut into small pieces and the mixtures should be fairly dry, so although you could, for example, use tomatoes, you would be best just using a little bit mixed with a drier ingredient and perhaps throw away the seeds and juice. Courgettes, green beans, cabbage, pumpkin, carrot, chopped green herbs (mint, coriander, chives etc.) and cooked pulses all work well and I'm sure you can think of more.
Now on to the dough:
Ingredients
3 and a half mugs of flour
1 mug of cold water
Salt
A little cumin powder
The quantities here will make about fifty samosas (probably forty-eight, as frying them six at a time is usually most convenient). Alter the amounts to suit the number of samosas you fancy making.
Put the flour in a bowl or pot and mix in some salt and cumin powder. You should be aiming for a fairly stiff, dry dough, so add the water gradually while stirring. Be careful when you think you have added almost enough water. What often happens is you add a little touch more and your dough turns to glue. If this happens you need to add more flour but then you end up with twice as much dough as you need. It's better to be careful and mix the flour and water well to see if you really need more water. You'll often be surprised when a dry powdery mix suddenly starts binding together into a dough without adding any more water. When this happens, take the contents of the bowl out and knead it on a floured surface. The dough should be very stiff and not stick to your hands. If it does it's a bit wet so you should knead some more flour into it.
When you've got something workable, break off small lumps roll into balls 3-4cm in diameter. When you've done that roll the balls out into very thin circles. If you don't have a rolling pin, you can use a beer bottle for this. Make sure you cover everything well with flour to stop the dough sticking. The circles should be about 15 cm in diameter. If someone else is filling the samosas, pass the dough circle to them. If not you can pile them up if you dust them well with flour and your original mix wasn't too wet. You might not know it was too wet until all the circles have stuck together - that's life. Re-knead the lot and start again - the dough should be okay with the extra flour you've been adding.
There are a few ways to make a samosa. Some people suggest cutting the dough circles in half first, but I don't. For my method, take a whole circle, put some filling in the centre - about a dessert spoonful- and fold the edge nearest you over the filling. Now wet the other edges with some water (use a small brush if you can find one. Use a finger as a last resort) and then fold them over one at a time to make a triangle. It will be quite a scrappy looking triangle with flaps sticking out, but if you lift your samosa up, you can wet the flaps, wrap them round and smooth them down. It will take a little practice and if you have a dog it will come in really handy for eating the ones you make a real mess of. Lay the samosas side by side on a lightly floured surface.
To fry them, heat a pot or deep frying pan with about 5 cm of oil in it. The oil is ready when a small cube of bread takes thirty seconds to go brown. Be gentle laying the samosas in the oil - this is a potentially very dangerous operation. Lay them in side by side. Put as many in as you can (probably six) and fry them for about five minutes each side. They should be golden rather than brown and you should watch the temperature of your oil to see it isn't getting too hot (you'll probably have to alter the flame under the pan between batches).
Lay the cooked samosas on a few layers of kitchen paper (or one layer of kitchen paper over a few layers of newspaper) and pile up layers with paper in between. This will keep the samosas warm and the weight will help to soak up excess oil. Serve hot or cold. They will keep for almost a week in the fridge and you can also freeze them.