I really enjoy learning to bake new things. :) It makes me feel like I'm not staying sedentary in my housewifery skills. We stumbled upon the fact that the takeaway in town sometimes has fresh samosas available. Yum, yum! A few times we've indulged. :) But then I started to wonder,
How difficult would it be to make my own samosas? The rest, as they say, is history.
My first attempt at samosas was last week. It was a lot of work, and being inexperienced I made it take longer than it should have. I think it was a 2 1/2 hr process from start to finish. The end result was not perfection, but it still tasted nice. The dough was not dense enough, so it didn't have the proper crispy/chewy texture that is necessary when you bite into a hot samosa. And I didn't do a very good job shaping them OR sealing them. So some of my samosas 'unsealed' while they were cooking and their contents leaked out.
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| first batch of samosas, cooking and ready to go in (you can see my shaping was no good!) |
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| part of the first batch, ready to eat |
We really enjoyed the samosas, and I was determined to face up to the challenge of improving them the
next time around. As it turned out, I added them to David's birthday dinner menu -- as I was cooking a meal for 16 people -- which was probably over-confident of me. :-D But the happy ending to the story is that they turned out REALLY REALLY well and I was very satisfied with them!
I spent some time doing more research online about how to shape samosas properly, and in the process I found a much better recipe for the samosa dough. If you want to try to make samosas I would highly recommend this link
http://beyondcurries.blogspot.com/search?q=samosa+dough There were video tutorials which I found very, very helpful! I realized that the first time around, my samosa dough was NOT made properly and that affected how they cooked up and tasted. Basically when you make the dough you want it to be as stiff as possible so that means add the water REALLY slowly and only put in enough to combine all the flour. You don't want it to be sticky or soft. You want it to be stiff.
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| second time around - I used the underside of a plate to help me roll out and form the samosas |
You can see here the process of making the samosas. Take a golf-ball amount of dough, roll it well into a ball shape in your hand to make it smooth, flatten it well and dip it several times in the flour. Then roll it out (I found the underside of a ceramic plate worked perfectly). Then cut the oval in half vertically - and each half forms one samosa. This technique works so well that I'm going to do the same next time I make tortillas - it's the same idea!
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| formed samosas ready to be cooked |
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| second batch cooking |
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| a few of the finished samosas, round 2 - they went fast! |
The samosas were a huge hit at David's birthday party. In case you're wondering what I used for filling, I made it up (basing it loosely on other recipes but I didn't have the exact ingredients called for -- i.e. I don't have cumin seed or other seeds) using sweet potato, chilli, cumin, garlic, ginger, turmeric, thyme, coriander, salt & pepper, a little bit of onion, cooked in some oil. It was YUM!
And because every post is better off with some kid cuteness:
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| Ketzia LOVES watermelon |
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| Elijah eating dinner with his friends on David's birthday |
I made a 3rd batch of samosas yesterday with the leftover filling from the David's birthday batch! So I think we're all 'samosa-satisfied' around here for a while... :)
