I Saw the Sign

There is a depanneur (convenience store) down the street that is run by an Indian couple. They have a tiny makeshift sign in the window advertising homemade samosas. Well, somewhat surprisingly, I've never had a samosa. I've had a mimosa before, but I assure you that's a different thing entirely. So, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, I decided to make some.

The hardest part was deciding what kind of samosa I wanted to make. Typically I think that samosas are filled with spiced meat, but I chose the meatless route and made Vegetarian Samosas, which are stuffed with potatoes. There are also sweet samosas that are glazed with syrup after being fried, which I can imagine being like something you'd eat at a carnival. In hindsight I should have made all 3 samosas so I had a better scope of them, but I was still quite happy with the results.

Historically I've had a bit of problems getting my dough to work with me, but I think I've since overcome that. The dough is similar to that of a Dumpling, but is rolled thinner so that it flakes up beautifully when fried. I do not have a rolling pin here, so I used a wine bottle with the label removed. I call this the student's or po' man's pin, it works fine for something like this. I had a bit of difficulty making my samosas into decent triangles at first, but it didn't take too long to get used to it. The dough is pretty forgiving and can be rerolled to perfection, but I am not that patient.

I thought that the potatoes gave it a really nice contrast in textures that I don't think would really be accomplished by meat, so I suppose I'm going to have to try it some day and find out. The filling is spicy and has a very fresh flavor of green onions, cilantro and chilies. I think that the starchiness of the potatoes mellows the heat a bit though, as well as the yogurt I served with it that had a crushed garlic clove added to it. These were delicious while hot out of the pan, but as they started to cool they sort of became mushy and the leftovers were horrible like a cold potato turnover. I served the samosas with some plain cooked white rice, steamed green beans and leftover Cholay.