Thursday, December 18, 2008

Samosas

I have no idea where we got the recipe for these; we've been making them for a while. Will shared his favorite kitchen smell the other day - one of my favorite kitchen smells comes from a step making these. This is a little more involved of a recipe, but nothing is difficult or anything like that. We haven't tried it, but I imagine these would freeze pretty well; they are good the next day for leftovers. The dipping sauce is good with them, but be warned that it will leave your house/apartment smelling like vinegar for the rest of the evening (and until all the dirty dishes get washed). This made us ~12 samosas (dinner for two, plus two smaller lunch servings the next day).

Filling:
5-6 small red-skinned potatoes, well washed
1T. butter
1c. minced onion
2 med. cloves garlic, minced
1 T. grated ginger (or more!)
1 t. mustard seed (not ground mustard)
1 t. dried, ground coriander
3/4 t. salt
1 1/2 c. uncooked green peas (we use frozen)
2 T. lemon juice
Cayenne pepper to taste

Roughly chop potatoes (we leave skins on) and place in saucepan, cover with water and boil to soften. Drain, mash, set aside in a bowl. Melt butter in the pan. Add onion, garlic, ginger, mustard seeds, coriander and salt. Saute over medium heat 8-10 minutes. (My favorite savory kitchen smell!) Add to potatoes. Mix in peas. Allow to cool for ~10-15 minutes before filling samosas.

Dough:
2 1/2 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1 c. yogurt (or buttermilk, but we've always used plain yogurt)

Add flour and salt to bowl. Mix. Make well in the center for yogurt. Mix w/ spoon then by hand, adding extra flour as needed to keep from being sticky. Knead for 5 min.

Making the samosas: Preheat oven to 425 deg F. Oil baking sheet. Roll out 1 to 1 1/2 inch balls of dough pretty thin. Place ~2 T. filling into center of dough, fold over and seal with water and a fork. Brush tops w/ oil. Bake 15 min at 425, then turn samosas over, reduce heat to 375 deg F and bake ~10 min more.

Dipping sauce:

1/4 c. cider vinegar
2 T. water
1 1/2 T. brown sugar
1 very small clove garlic, minced
1/2 t. salt
2 T. cold water
~1-2 t. corn starch?

Mix all except last two ingredients in saucepan. Boil, then simmer ~5 minutes. In separate bowl (or coffee mug :) mix the cold water and corn starch and then slowly add to sauce, stirring.
(last time we made these was the first time we tried thickening the sauce. It definitely is better thicker, but I'm not sure of the amount of corn starch really needed.)

3 comments:

Stalin said...

Well I bet you thought this was going to go unheeded, as the post is almost 6 weeks old. Fear not! A visit to Woodman's supplied me with some ingredients I have never before used:
-Fresh ginger root
-Mustard seeds [not ground!]
-dried coriander

I was eager to cook this tomorrow but Josie reminded me tomorrow is a friends birthday dinner - so it will be Wednesday :) I'll let you know how it goes!

Stalin said...

This was good! I noticed the lemon juice and cayenne were not mentioned but threw em in the filling which went fine.

The dipping sauce didn't really work for me, I used 1.5 t of corn starch and ended up with a thick jelly that the samosas could not pierce.

The samosas themselves were great! Next time I'll try hotter and spicier, and might try using the filling with the pot pie crust, as filling/crimping seemed like a lot of work.

Kate said...

Ah yes, I forgot to put lemon juice and cayenne in. Thanks for putting them in -- they're pretty important!

If you try it with pot pie crust let me know - it sounds good and the filling/crimping is quite a bit of work. I like the texture of that dough though in the recipe. It's different than a lot of crusts/doughs.

Glad you (mostly) liked it! :)