Samosas

I've been wanting to try out making my own samosas for some time now. We eat Indian food A LOT and it's hard to come by the perfect samosa. These definitely aren't perfect, but they're close. I used this recipe but changed it a tad bit. This makes 18 samosas.

Ingredients...
For pastry:
1 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. + 1 tbsp water
4 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt

For filling:
5 red skin potatoes - boiled, cooled, peeled, and then diced
1 c. frozen peas
1 green chili, finely chopped
1 tbsp. cilantro
2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. chili powder
2 tsp. garam masala
1/2 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. lemon juice

Instructions:
- Heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan. Cook green chili pepper for a minute, then toss in remaining filling ingredients. Cook this for 5 minutes then turn off heat.

- While your filling mixture is cooling, make your pastry crust. Place flour, salt, and oil in a bowl. Mix together with your fingers -- the dough will be very crumbly at this point. Slowly pour in water, making sure to knead with your hands. Add just enough water to form a firm dough. I think I used just over 1/2 cup of water.

- Let your dough rest for 20 minutes.

- Pull off pieces of dough to form 9 palm-sized balls. Let these rest for 10 minutes on a floured work surface.

- Using a rolling pin, flatten each ball of dough into an 8" circle. Cut in half using a pizza cutter or a knife.
- Form each half into a cone. I used a little bit of water to seal the edges. Make sure they're nice and sealed or your filling will spill out when fried.

- Spoon around 2-3 tbsp. filling into each cone. Seal off the edge with a bit of water. This is a bit tricky at first but you'll get the hang of it after the first few.

- Fry your samosas on medium-high heat until golden brown on each side.

- Let dry on a paper bag to soak up the excess oil. Cool and then freeze leftover samosas and pop into the oven when ready to eat! I also recommend sprinkling a bit of garam masala or cumin on your samosas when serving.

My oh my, these were GOOD! I had a lot of extra filling in the end, though, so next time I'll cut it back to only 4 potatoes but will probably use the same amount of spices (I normally like a lot of spice and I probably could have added a bit more to this). The pastry crust was perfectly flaky and crunchy. I was amazed! These aren't nearly as pretty as samosas you buy frozen or get from a restaurant, but they tasted nearly the same. These samosas are time consuming to make but well worth it, that's for sure.