Samosas

If I had to eat only one food for the rest of my life, it would be samosas. Of course, my life would probably be very short, seeing as samosas are deep fried. But, hey, I would be in heavenly bliss every day.

Winter Term ended three days ago and spring classes start this Monday. That means I cannot fulfill my hopes of deconstructing seitan and other mock meats. Maybe I will get around to this in the future, but for now, I have to start focusing on my last semester in college.

Feeling bad about cutting my project short, I decided instead to show you how to make samosas. The filling and dough are easy enough to make. (I prefer Manjula's recipe, though I used Vegan with a Vengeance's recipe for a long time. Manula's samosa recipe is so much easier, though.) What I'm going to demonstrate is how I roll out the samosa dough and make samosas that look like the restaurant kind. That tends to be the trickier aspect of making samosas.

Step 1: Pinch and roll the dough into large balls (slightly larger than a golf ball).
Step 2: Flatten one of the balls on a floured surface. Roll out with a rolling pin. Pick it up with your hands and stretch it. Roll it out into a circle and until the dough is thin enough to almost see through, but not paper thin.
Step 3: Cut the circle in half with a knife, so you have two half moon shapes. On one half circle, wet half the edge facing you and then wet the other edge touching the floured surface. (Try not to get your surface wet).
Step 4: Take a half circle and form a cone, touching the two wet edges to each other. (See! The wet edges line up and don't get your hand wet). With wet fingers, smooth the creases on the inside and outside of the cone and pinch the bottom shut. You don't want any oil sneaking into the inside, or you'll have greasy potato filling. Hold the cone in your non-dominant hand with the top peaking out.

Step 5: Spoon filling into the cone, pushing it down and packing it in so the samosa rounds out. I use about five spoonfulls of filling, but just watch your samosa to make sure you're not overstretching.
Step 6: Stop when it's just about full.
Step 7: Fold in half of the remaining dough.
Step 8: Wet the inside of the other half of the dough still sticking up. Stretch it over the other part and press down.
Step 9: Wet along the crease and smooth with your finger. Pinch the two points shut. It will look white and pasty.
Step 10: Fry 'em! I recommend a deep fryer because it's safer, but we used a makeshift deep fryer (tiny pot filled halfway with oil) for a long time.
Step 11: Eat plain or with mint chutney, coriander chutney, or tamarind sauce.