Samosas-- the original recipe

I decided to try the Samosas using the actual ingredients called for in the cookbook. It was disappointing to say the least! I am bummed since I made these as a dinner offering for our friends Terese and Brian and new baby girl. I am surprised that they were so blah! The only thing that saved them was the dipping sauce (which isn't in my early copy of the cookbook.) I did run out of stuffing since I was making a double recipe, so opened a jar of spaghetti sauce, added peas and some cheese and pre-cooked frozen hamburger. They were much better than the original recipe. So I suggest that the recipe be zipped up a bit, maybe adding mustard powder rather than mustard seeds.

Samosas/Calzone

Last night I started out to make Calzone (page 159), but the page flipped and I unexpectedly ended up making the dough for Samosas (page 155). I guess I was really pretty asleep! They are very similar, although one is a yeast dough and the other is a "pie crust" dough, and one deep fries the other bakes. I made the Samosas dough and baked them. I also varied the stuffing. I have one of those Pocket Gourmet makers, so was able to stuff them with more filling than you can by hand. If you like this type of little pocket things, this plastic gizmo useful. You can probably find them at the thrift shop.

I used the yogurt samosas recipe for the dough, rolled it out and created the pockets. The dough was a little wet, but seemed ok.... ended up tasting fabulous. It was flaky and really nice.

For the filling, I used some of the ingredients, but made some changes. I used: 1 baked sweet potato, mashed, ~1/2 cup thawed frozen peas, 1/2 cup shredded spinach(Thanks, Val!), garlic, sliced onion, grated carrots, salt, 1 T. lemon juice, 1/2 t. powdered mustard powder, 1/2 t coriander. I also had a left over piece of cooked steak, and chopped it fine and added it to the mixture. This packed up very well and held together in the dough.

After forming the pockets, I brushed them with melted butter and baked them for 20 minutes at 450 degrees.

They browned around the edges, but were not overall brown. I used a piece of non-stick aluminum foil on a cookie sheet to bake them on, so sticking wasn't an issue. Craig even liked them. We each had two of them and a green salad for a filling dinner.