ALOO SAMOSAS
Serves: 2 to 4 as a snack.
Prep Time: 20 minutes.
Cooking Time: 45 minutes
Dietary Style: DF. Vegetarian.
DF / Vegan Sub: Olive oil.
Aloo samosas are a classic snack made all across the Indian Subcontinent. I love mine to be simply spiced, but with a nice little kick of chilli and an acidic brightness. The atta flour is important in achieving that extra tasty dimension brought by the flour’s inherently nutty character. If you don’t have it in your pantry and / or can’t locate it, then I’d advise using a 50-50 combination of wholemeal flour (for flavour) and Italian 00 flour (for its stretch). The most time consuming part of this whole recipes is the boiling of the potatoes to malleable softness. The rest is quite straightforward. Serve with chai as an afternoon snack, or alongside a crisp Saturday afternoon beer.
INGREDIENTS:
For the samosa pastry:
- 1 cup atta flour
- 1 tsp ghee
- 1 tsp fine pink salt
For the potato mix:
- 300 gms potatoes
- 1 tbsp ghee
- 1½ tsp fine white salt
- 3 tsp cumin seed
- ½ tsp hot ground red chilli
- 2 tsp minced garlic
- ½ large fresh green chilli, chopped
- 2 cups vegetable oil for frying
In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients for the samosa pastry. Knead the dough together using a thin stream of hot water, adding only a little water at a time in order to ensure you are able to achieve the right consistency with the dough. The dough should be held together, but not sticky or wet. Neither should it be too hard. Watch the video to get a strong idea of what the end result should be.
Set the dough aside.
Boil your 300 grams of potatoes until well softened. It;’s your choice whether to chop and mash while warm with the skin on, or wait until the potatoes cool and peel them, then mash them to prepare them for spicing.
Set the potatoes aside.
In a medium frying pan, heat the ghee for the potato spicing on a medium heat. Once it’s bubbling a little, add the salt, dried chilli, minced garlic, fresh chilli, and cumin seed. Stir through for two to three minutes on a medium-low heat until bubbling and aromatic.
Once the spice is singing, add the mashed potato to the frying pan and push it into the spice mix, making sure it is very well coated.
Set aside.
Back to the samosa dough, break the dough into six even balls. Keeping some atta flour on hand to flour the benchtop, roll the balls of samosa dough into even rounds of around 1cm thick. Look to the video for viewing instruction if uncertain how the end result should appear.
Once you have your samosa pastry rounds rolled out, take them one by one and fold in half so you have a semi-circle, then fold in half again and form into an ice cream cone shape. Stuff a small amount of spied potato into your samosa dough cone and then seal with your fingers around the edges.
In a large cast iron wok, or deep fryer, heat 2 cups of vegetable oil until hot. The oil should be hot enough that the samosa pastry begins enthusiastically bubbling immediately upon hitting the oil. Turn the samosas in the oil so that they brown evenly. Remove and place on a little absorbent kitchen towel.
Serve hot.