Phyllo Curried Vegetable Samosas

from Everyone Can Cook Everything by Eric Akis

　

Preparation time 40 minutes.

Cooking time 15 minutes per sheet of 14 samosas

You can make the pastry from scratch or use phyllo or egg roll wrappers, shallow fry or deep fry or bake as i did, maybe to each her own.  This was my first attempt to make samosas and they turned out great for me so use this easy fool-proof recipe or another healthy version after checking out all the possibilities at you tube.com

Frozen phyllo pastry sheets replace the knead--and-roll-your-own pastry usually used to make samosas, however one pkg. was too many layers to use for this recipe. And since i purchased it frozen then left it to thaw for 3 or 4 hours i didn’t think it was right to refreeze the leftover sheets. I used up the extra sheets by inventing a butter, cinnamon and sugar rolled up cookie concoction and with the addition of a few raisins it turned out ok and so no waste was involved.

On to the samosas; i highly recommend watching a you tube video to see how to fold them up….i didn’t and it’s obvious in the picture how mine went wrong and now after eating them i can see how odd little layers of pastry sticking out here and there just ain’t right; it flakes off easily when not rolled up in a properly organized fashion, making the samosas difficult to eat as a hand-held appetizer because you get crispy little flakes all over yourself and the floor. Especially not good if you don’t have a dog. So too late i watched the videos and saw how when rolled up correctly there will be no flaky pastry excess jutting out all over the place. Yours will be nice and neat if you look at this video rather than figuring out the weird instructions which i am including anyhow as in the original recipe.

The video is short and sweet at 1 minute long and you will learn to make fabulous samosas especially if using egg roll wrappers or your own real dough. For me using phyllo wrappers perhaps a practice session with a strip of paper would have helped to understand how to enclose the filling in a neat 3 sided pkg.

http://youtu.be/kWjg3zdEx3w


2 cups potatoes, peeled and cut into ¼” cubes. (2 - 3 small potatoes)

1/3 cup finely diced onion

1/3 cup finely diced red bell pepper

1TBS. vegetable oil

1tsp. finely chopped ginger

2tsp. mild curry powder

1 TBS. lime juice

1TBS. brown sugar

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup frozen peas

¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro or mint or green onion

1/3 cup melted butter

8 sheets phyllo pastry

Mango chutney for dipping

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Boil the potatoes until quite tender but still holding their shape.

Drain and place in a bowl

Place oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, bell pepper and ginger

Cook until tender, about 4 minutes.

Mix in the curry powder, lime juice and brown sugar and cook 1 minute more.

Spoon this mixture over the potatoes

Add salt, peas and cilantro or mint and mix to combine.

Let mixture cool to room temperature.

Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preheat oven to 375º

Place a sheet of the phyllo pastry on a large work surface with a wide side horizontally in front of you. Brush the sheet lightly with melted butter, top with another sheet of phyllo pastry and lightly brush it with butter as well.

Cut the layered phyllo widthwise into 7 strips, each about 2 ½” wide (this was where i went wrong, it might be better to think of it as vertically rather than widthwise)

Place 1 TBS of the potatoe mixture at the bottom end of each strip.

Fold one corner of the phyllo over the potatoe mixture so the bottom edge meets the side edge and forms a triangle. Continue folding the triangle sideways and upwards to the end of the strip completely enclosing the potatoe filling. Set the triangle on one of the baking sheets and layer, cut and fill the remaining phyllo sheets the same (you should end up with about 28 samosas)

Brush tops of samosas with melted butter and bake 15 minutes or until puffed and golden brown. Alternately the samosas can now be frozen and baked another day without defrosting.

Serve with mango chutney as a topping or dipping sauce.
This is the kind of chutney i bought and it was excellent. Hope you enjoy this fall weather appy!