Aloo Samosa/Punjabi Samosa - Immensely Popular!

#Samosa is one of the most popular savoury snacks in #India, which is well known in other countries too. Contrary to the popular belief that it originated in India, #Samosa is actually a middle eastern snack. The traditional Indianized samosa is filled with spicy potato masala and served with chutney. There are numerous variations that can be done in a samosa, such as Paneer Samosa, Onion Samosa, Matar Samosa, etcetera.

#Samosa is a triangular/cone shaped pastry sheet filled with aloo masala and then deep fried. Now-a-days as people are more health conscious, some often bake it instead of deep frying, but the real taste can only be felt if samosas are fried. These days when everyone is staying home, they try to make something using #minimal #ingredients, and samosas come handy in such situations. Made with just a few #ingredients these are a great #snack to enjoy with evening #tea or breakfast (once in a while we all can have fried #breakfast, and if you don't prefer fried, just bake them :)). So, here's the recipe of traditionally made no onion, no garlic, crispy and flaky aloo samosa. Enjoy these beauties with a cup of tea and chutneys. I ran out of coriander so could not make green chutney, but had imli chutney as my saviour.

This recipe will make 9-10 samosas. Do try it. I'm certain that you'll love it!

List of Ingredients:

For Aloo/Potato Masala

1. 5 medium sized Potatoes (boiled and slightly mashed).

2. Salt - per taste.

3. Oil - 2 tbsp.

4. Dry Mango/Amchur Powder - 2 tsp.

5. Whole Coriander - Half tbsp.

6. Cumin Seeds/Jeera - 1 tbsp.

7. Red Chilli powder - Half tsp.

8. Green Chilli - 1 (finely chopped).

9. Green Peas/Matar - 2 tbsp (totally optional).

For Dough

1. All purpose flour/Maida - 1 cup

2. Salt - 1 tsp.

3. Carom Seeds/Ajwain - 2 Pinch

4. Ghee/Oil - 2 tbsp

5. Cold Water - Half Cup

Easy to follow steps:

First we'll prepare the dough. Take all purpose flour in a bowl, add ajwain, ghee/oil, salt and mix well, you will notice that everything will come together. Then add water little by little to knead a stiff dough as you would knead for poori. Dough should be really stiff. For me some water was still left from the half cup that I took so it all depends on the quality of your flour. Cover dough with a damp cloth and let it rest for 45 minutes.

For the filling, let's first dry roast coriander and cumin for a minute and make coarse powder out of it. If you want to save time and make it quick, you can use ready-made jeera powder and coriander powder, but I like to take the taste up a notch so I prefer freshly ground masala. In a pan, take oil, let it heat a bit and drop cumin seeds. Once cumin seeds crackle, add chopped green chilli and green peas. Roast them for a minute or two on medium heat. Transfer potatoes to the pan and pour the dry masala that we made, salt and some red chilli powder. Mix well and roast potato mixture for 2-3 minutes. Finally add amchur powder, give it a mix. You can garnish with fresh coriander. I did not have fresh coriander so I just skipped it.

Let's make the samosas now. Just knead the dough one more time with greased hands to make sure there are no cracks and it's smooth. Take a small ball from the dough on a rolling board. You can grease the board and pin but do not use dry flour at all. Start rolling the dough ball and make a thin sheet. Cut it in half and apply water on all the edges. Fold the straight side and stick them together while overlapping slightly to make a cone. Press throughout the line to make it stick to the other side. Hold the cone in hand and fill 1.5 tbsp of filling. Close the opening by gently pressing while making sure it sticks and encapsulates all the potato filling.

Make all the samosas in the same way. Take oil in a kadhai for frying. Heat oil slightly. Test oil temperature by dropping a small dough ball. There should be very less and small bubbles in the oil. Drop as many samosas as they can fit in kadhai or pan. Fry them on moderate heat by rotating and flipping over in between until they are golden in color.

And, here we have these triangle shaped crispy flaky samosas to get indulged in!

Happily Stay at Home!

Hope you liked the recipe and didn't find it too difficult. Let me know if this got you high on flavors. Don't forget to subscribe for more updates. Leave a comment for any questions/thoughts. Talk to you in my next mouthwatering recipe!