The Samosa Experiment

I cannot now say enough how much I love samosas. They're another Indian favorite of mine, which consist of a pastry filled with a potato, pea, and spices mixture. They're then folded up, which is actually quite difficult to do at first, and traditionally fried until golden brown. Again my very good friend introduced me to these. In college they would be in her freezer and we would pull a couple out, reheat them, and enjoy them as a delicious midnight snack.

Right away I should say that my samosas were in no way perfect and they're is definite room for improvement. I feel that the filling was perfect, it tasted just how I remember my friend's samosas tasting. Mine consisted of mashed up potatoes, peas, and a mixture of Indian spices like coriander and turmeric. The one big thing about making these is that you can bake them and then freeze them or assemble them and freeze them without baking. I chose to do the latter and must say it is nice to be able to pop a few into the oven whenever I feel like a snack.

So, the real problem with these were the pastry shell, it was lacking something. It tasted very bland to me and that there was some flavor component missing from it. However, maybe this is partly my fault because I looked for a recipe that had the option of frying or baking them. I of course chose to try and make them slightly healthier by not frying them and taking the baking route instead. Maybe if they had been fried they would have had increased flavor, even though I read numerous things that they were just as delicious when baked. Mine also came out smaller than I would have liked, which made them difficult to form into a neat and tidy triangular shape.

Despite all of these things I will still enjoy eating my semi bland samosas, though I will not be allowing anyone else to eat these until I can fix the recipe.

Samosas

Filling Ingredients:
4 potatoes
1 onion
1/4 c peas
1 sm ginger root (didn't use)
2 tsp lime juice (didn't use)
2 green chilies
1/4 c cilantro leaves (didn't use)
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp chili powder
salt to taste
2 tsp coriander
cumin seed to taste

Directions:
1. Roast or boil potatoes and then roughly mash, add onion, peas, ginger, lime juice, chilies, cilantro, and all spices
2. Make sure it is mixed together well

Dough Ingredients:
1 1/2 c flour
1/4 tsp
water

Directions:
1. Take flour and salt add water slowly to make a stiff dough
2. Take a piece of dough and roll out to form an elliptical shape
3. Form dough into a cone shape moistening edges so that they adhere to each other
4. Fill the cone with the filling and then fold over the open end to create a triangular shaped pastry
5. Place on a cookie sheet and bake at 300 degrees F for about 45 minutes. Mine were done sooner due to the extremely small size of my samosas.