Samosas

Samosa - a stuffed pastry is how wikipedia describes it. This is probably one of India's most popular and versatile dishes. Its an every occasion dish and you can see so many variations of it as you go from south to north and east to west in India. My personal favorite is the Irani samosa that you get at these Irani Cafes in Hyderabad. It is stuffed mostly with onion and sometimes a little carrot/beans. The samosa itself is a mini size and extremely crisp and flavorful. I have so many memories associated with samosa -

• This small shop in a shopping center that used to sell these small irani samosas and a fruit drink called Soma (that goes back to my first ever memories of my home and family in Hyderabad as a kid),

• Sunday evenings when this queer dude would come on his bicycle and sell hot samosas, of vendors outside my school selling samosas for 25 paise each,

• This sweet shop near my place where dad would bring samosas, pakodas and it would transform into an entire meal paired with maggie ketchup and bread,

• I had hot samosas (called singhara in north east India) in this small tea shop in Darjeeling while it was raining outside,

• The time when I first started making samosas for my hubby out of wonton wrappers during our dating days,

• The hot hot Bharat bazaar samosas my hubby would bring home on his way from work for my folks and sister when we were engaged

I can go on forever:)

This recipe is for a slightly different stuffing than the usual potato filling. It was arrived at in an effort to emulate my favorite Irani samosa but tasted nothing like it. It still tasted pretty good but my taste buds that have memory cells refused to like it. According to my hubby it was still very tasty and is worth a blog post. So here goes -


Ingredients:

1. Yellow onion - thinly sliced, 1
2. Carrot - 1, grated
3. Peas - 1/2 cup
   
4. Curry leaves - 4/5
5. Green chillies - 2, finely chopped
6. Ginger garlic paste - 1/2 tsp
7. Garam masala - 1/4th tsp
8. Red chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
9. Jeera-dhania powder - 1/2 tsp
10. Salt
11. Lemon juice - 1 tsp
12. Corriander leaves - 1 cup finely chopped
13. Mint leaves - 1/2 cup finely chopped
    
14. Oil - 1 tsp for the filling and a wok full for deep frying
15. Milk - 2 tsps
16. Wonton wrappers

Directions:

1. Heat 1 tsp oil in a pan and add the curry leaves and chopped chillies.
2. Add sliced onions and saute until well done.
3. Add ginger garlic paste and after 2 mins, add the grated carrots, peas, chilli powder, salt, jeera dhania powder, garam masala and cook until well done.
4. Add the corriander leaves, mint leaves and lemon juice and cook for 2 more mins.
5. Take a wonton wrapper and cut into half diagonally (This is for the big square wonton wrappers. You can also try the smaller ones).
6. Fill in the center with the stuffing made above and use milk to seal the corners.
7. Heat oil for deep frying and drop the samosas when hot. It only takes a min for each samosa to get done. Enjoy hot with ketchup:)