Samousa

When I was a kid, I loved when we had samousas. Since we have all these Indian stores in our neighborhood, we have access to any ingredient needed in that realm. One day, I went to the local grocery store and in their delly they had samousas, so I tried one. It wasn’t bad at all, but it was not quite the taste I was used to. So, I set about making samousas!

I started with making a ground beef stuffing with peas, garlic, ginger and onion. The spice I mainly used was garum masala and some red chili powder along with cumin and cardemom. I also used cumin seeds along with cilantro, lemon juice and jalapeno peppers. After I cooked that up, I put it in the fridge to cool, then set about learning how to make the dough to make Samousa.

It’s an enriched dough made with peanut oil and the secret ingredient are the Ajwin seeds.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ tsp salt 1–2 tbsp oil (or melted ghee) ~
• ¾ cup water (as needed)
• Extra flour for dusting
• 1/4 tea spoon of Ajwain seeds.

The secret to this dough is to get it together, let it rest a while then divide it into seperate balls, (I used 50 g), keep them coivered, then roll each one out as thin as possible, around a 1mm thickness. Once rolled, it gets dropped on the hot plate for 15 sec a side then layed out under a cuver to keep it moist.

Once rolled out and cooked briefly on each side, you use the pizza cutter to cut rectangles. Then, make a four paste for glueing the sides before folding. To fold, make a pocket. Fill without over filling, seal the pocket and set aside, covered.WHen all the samousa are made, they go in the freezer till its time to fry.

Nest is the oil. I used peanut oil and tried the first batch in the wok, which got too hot. They tasted great, but I needed to get better control of the heat. So, I went to a sauce pan with a candy thermometer, and did these at 350.

They really need to be at 300 first then finished at 350

These are MUCH better, also delicious, but I still do not have the blistering I am looking for. Next time!