Samosa (Indian Style Savory Stuffed Pastry)

For the pastry:

The trick to kneading perfect dough is to always add water in small portions. Dough for samosa pastry should be a little tougher than you’d expect. As a test, when you press your finger into it, you should have to apply a little pressure.

Mix the all purpose flour, salt, ajwain seeds and semolina together. Add oil into the flour mixture and mix it all very well together. To mix the oil well into the flour, take flour in small portions in your hand and rub it between your palms. To make sure that the oil is mixed well, hold the flour in your fist, press tightly and open your fist. When it’s ready, the flour should still hold itself together.

Now add water in small portions and try to make a dough out of it. I easily used 2/3 cup of water and then a little extra to wet my hands for kneading.

Once the dough comes together, work it for another 5 minutes. Then wrap with a plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.

For the filling:

Boil potatoes until they are fork tender (For me it takes about 15-20 minutes but it will depend on the size of the potatoes). Then they are done, remove them from the water and allow them to cool and then mash them. Set aside.

Heat oil in a pan on medium high heat. Add cumin seeds. Once they start to pop add chili and onion. Cook until onion becomes translucent. Then add peas and turmeric. Once the peas are cooked, add coriander powder, salt and the mashed potatoes. Mix everything together and set it aside for the mixture to cool before using them for filling.

Making Samosas:

The trick all samosa shop vendors use to make crisp samosas is that they use warm oil to fry their samosas. They drop them in oil which is a little over room temperature and slowly increase the temperature of the oil. This cooks the outer pastry slowly, making them crisp. Frying them in hot oil makes the pastry soft and you don’t want that.

Start by rolling a lemon size ball of dough into a circle using a rolling pin. The flat circle should be around 11-12 cm in diameter.

Cut the big circle into two semicircles. Take about two spoons of potato mixture, make a ball out of it and place it in the center of the semicircle. Now dip your finger in water and rub it across the straight edge of the semicircle to make it wet so that it can stick.

Pick the dough up from one side and fold it over the potato ball covering it half way. Then pick up the other side and place it over to the previous one, covering the potato to make a triangle shape. The two flaps should stick to each other right at the center of the samosa. The third side of the triangle should be still open. Use a little water, make it wet and stick the two flaps together with your finger. Repeat the process with the rest of the dough and filling.

Use a wok or deep fryer to fry the samosas in the hot oil till they turn golden brown in color. Serve with your choice of sauce or chutney. Shop vendors in India sell them with green cilantro and tomato chutney along with some yogurt and tamarind chutney.