Samosa

Samosa is popular snack in many Iranian cities too, (just as it is in central and south Asia, many African and all Middle eastern countries) In Iran, sambooseh is reputed to be best prepared by Abadanis.  Samosa is also largely a savory “street food” – one you would buy in specialized restaurants or off a kiosk or even push card. I make it at home, and it turns wonderful.

Ingredients

• I pack, Lavash or Markouk flat bread. Buy from Middle Eastern stores. One pack contains 4 large bread pieces and each piece would give about ten samosas
• About ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 1 medium sized onion, chopped
• 250 gr. ground beef
• 4-5 medium potatoes
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon powdered black pepper
• Salt to taste
• 1 bunch of parsley, chopped

For the sauce:

• 2 tbsp. tomato paste
• 2 tbsp V8 or tomato juice
• Pinch of powdered chilli
• Pinch of Mustard
• Hot pepper (such as Tabasco) to your taste

Method:

1. Cutting the bread

This is the most important step I would say!  Take a bread and just as it is folded, cut in four horizontal parts. That will give you four long strips to start working on. Cut each strips in equal sized parallel-gram pieces. These will be your samosa shelves. Soon, you will need to fold each soft shell the way shown in the picture   and fill each three-quarter half with the filling.

2. Preparing the filling:

In a medium frying pan warm 1 tbsp. and sauté chopped onions. Add minced ground beef if you are using it. Stir frequently. Once it changes colour, add turmeric and black pepper and keep frying for a few more minutes. Put aside.

Boil potatoes. Skin and chop. Sprinkle enough salt and mix well.

Chop the washed and pat dried parsley.

Mix everything together. This is your filling.

*You can perfectly make a delicious vegan samosa by simply omitting the meat.  In this case, you add turmeric and black powder to your frying onion before mixing it with chopped potatoes. All other steps are the same.

Now, all you need to do is fill the shells one by one, close them with their top parts, and put three or four at the time in a pan already containing hot vegetable oil.

It will take about one minute for each side of the samosa to turn crispy golden. And it takes a lot of oil to get to that perfect golden color without burning it. Remove them from pan and put them in paper towel to extract the excess oil. Never put warm samosas on top of each other.

Serve hot! Absolutely!!

3. Sauce:

Samosa is usually dipped in a very spicy hot sauce. How hot, depends on your taste when you are making it at home. Just mix the ingredients noted above and remember, time makes the sauce hotter; so if like me, you like it hot, make the sauce in advance.

Enjoy!