There’s no escaping the Arab influence on Indian food and culture and as the Moghuls arrived, so did rich sauces, meat, dates, butter and sweets. The Moghuls took to Indian food like the proverbial ducks to water but it was only once their own ingredients were touched by the magic of the Indian spices that they were truly at peace.  So much of the Indian food we know and love today was influenced by the Moghuls that it’s difficult to tell the one apart from the other and understandable that we often make mistakes. Biryanis, pilaffs, kormas and kababs are all Arab creations. The use of nuts, lamb, dates, cream, rose

water, rice and baked bread were unknown to the Indian chefs before the arrival of the Moghuls but one of the things that the Moghuls brought with them, the Samoosa or the Samosa have become such an intricate part of the Indian cuisine that few people on earth today would believe it … or for that matter, even care because they’re just so darned good.

Ingredients Pastry

• 250 ml all purpose flour
• Water to knead the dough
• 2 tbsp oil
• A pinch of salt

Filling

• 3-4 potatoes, boiled, peeled & mashed
• 125 ml green peas, blanched
• 2 green chillies, finely chopped
• ½ tsp ground red chillies
• ½ tsp cardamom seeds (small seeds removed from the cardamom pods), ground finely
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated finely
• 1tbsp fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped
• 1 tsp garam masala
• Salt to taste

Method Pastry

• Mix all the dry ingredients and the oil but not the water and add a little water at a time and knead the dough until you have a smooth, silky, soft dough.
• Cover it with cling wrap and set  aside for 15 half an hour in the refrigerator

Filling

• Put the mashed potatoes in a bowl and add the salt, the ground chillies, the ground cardamom, the garam masala, the green chillies, the grated ginger and the salt to taste and combine everything well.
• Finally add the fresh chopped coriander and set this aside aside.

To make

• Roll the dough out quite thinly and roll into 10 cm rolls that you cut into to sections so that it looks like two semi-circles.
• Take one semi circle and fold it into a cone, using water to seal the edges.
• Put a heaped teaspoon of filling in the cone and seal the third side using a drop of water – don’t over fill the samoosa (samosa) otherwise the filling will pop out when you fry it.
• Heat vegetable oil in a deep saucepan so that the oil is moderately hot and not too hot because you need to fry the samosa slowly until it is golden and crispy – this is important because very, very hot oil will turn the samosa black very quickly while the cooler oil will allow it to crisp up and turn golden.
• Optional 1 – add green peas, cashews, almonds or raisins (or a combination of all three) when you make the mashed potato mixture and combine everything very well.
• Option 2 – use good filo pastry instead of making your own.