Baked samosas | TummyKhush

This is one of those recipes that came to me just by chance. We had a left over Aloo curry (the one that is normally eaten with pooris) in the house. And then hubby said why not make some samosas out of them.

Samosas as a snack have always scared me for two reasons:

1. You use Maida to make it which in my book is a strict no-no
2. Deep frying which again… well what can I say.

Then hubby says, why don’t you use the OTG to bake the samosas and use whole wheat flour instead of Maida. I wasn’t very convinced but nevertheless went ahead and the results are for you to see.

Since this recipe is a bit elaborate, I would be dividing the making into 3 steps:

1. Making the covering for the samosas.
2. Making the stuffing for the samosas
3. Assembling and baking the samosas

Step 1 – Making the covering.

For this I used a combination of wheat flour and corn meal (not corn flour). I added  3 parts of wheat flour and one part of corn meal.
To this I added the usual suspects, salt and a 1/4 tsp of baking powder, I also warmed half a cup of cooking oil and then poured it over the mixture of wheat flour and corn meal with all the other ingredients added. I then kneaded the whole flour with water, just the way you would knead flour for making chapatis or puris. I also added some ajwain  seeds to the flour for an extra zing in taste. We don’t want the kneaded atta to be too soft of too hard. Once this is done, you then just leave the atta ball to set aside after covering it with a damp cloth.

Step 2 – Making the stuffing:

In the mean time we can jump to our second step i.e., making the stuffing for the samosas. The stuffing really is a matter of choice. Some people just put in lightly fried onions flavoured with different masalas for the stuffing. You can just do a green peas masala stuffing or the standard traditional aloo stuffing. This stuffing would be very similar to the aloo curry..only it needs to be a little dry and not runny. Otherwise the covering might collapse because of the moisture from the samosas.

For the stuffing you would need:
Potatoes – 4 to 5 medium boiled peeled and mashed.
Onions – 2 to 3 medium chopped finely

For the tempering:

Oil : 3 to 4 tbsp
Bengal gram dal/senaga pappu/chana dal : 1 tsp
Urad dal/minappa pappu : 1 tsp
Cumin seeds/jeera      : 1 tsp
Dry red chillies : 2 to 3 broken.
Hing/asafetida: a pinch
Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp
Green chillies – 3 to 4 finely chopped
Ginger – 1 inch piece grated
Curry leaves – a few.

Heat oil in a pan and once the oil gets heated, add all the ingredients required for the tempering and fry well.
Now add the onions and fry till the onions get translucent and stir. Add the mashed potatoes, mix for some more time till all the mixture coats the potatoes well. Add salt to taste and stir well. You can also add some chilli powder. This is an optional ingredient as we already add the green chillies.
Sprinkle some water, stir, Close the pan with a lid and allow to cook for sometime. This would help the masala and potatoes infuse into each other and enhance the flavour.
Sprinkle some chopped coriander and remove from the heat.
Keep the curry aside to cool down.

Preheat the oven/OTG to 150 degrees on Bake mode.

Step 3 – Assembling the samosas:

Take a small portion of the dough, a little bigger than lemon size .
Roll the dough into a  chapati. Make sure you roll the chapati as thinly as possible to make sure that you get a thin crusted samosa. You can use loose atta to ease the chapati rolling process.
Take one chapati and cut into two half circles. Take one half circle, place the curry in the centre. Apply some water on the corners and shape it into samosas. The water applied in the corners will help the ends stick and seal.
Continue the process till all the atta and the curry are exhausted.
Prepare all the samosas in this manner and spread over the baking tray. Drop a little oil of each of the samosas to help the baking in the oven.
Place the tray into the oven for around 15 minutes. Keep checking to make sure that the samosas don’t burn.Once you feel that the samosas are cooked, turn all the samosas, sprinkle some more oil, turn the temperature down to 100 degrees, bake for another 10 minutes. Now turn off the oven and allow the samosas to stay inside the oven to allow residual cooking.

Serve the samosas with sauce and chutney of your choice.