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Monday, July 11, 2011

An Attempt At Samosas

I love Indian food. I used to live around the corner from Samosa House, which was recently featured on the Food Network's Best Thing I Ever Ate. The adorable food blogger turned network star, Aarti Sequeira, mentioned it and its namesake samosas as the best thing she's ever eaten.

They are absolutely delicious. And when I lived a mere 3 minutes away, I would binge on them every Wednesday night. I don't know how or why Wednesdays became samosa night, but it was my weekly treat.

Samosa House is actually a wonderful little Indian market with a small selection of cooked foods, all vegetarian. This is where I was turned on to jackfruit, which is a story for another time, but suffice to say it is also delicious.

I'm a big fan.

And one day, after Aarti's own recipe for baked samosas ended up on my Facebook stream, I decided to get fancy and try making my own. She made it sound so easy. I had everything in the kitchen except the dough, and I figured I'd used Erika's paprika chicken for an additional spice kick. So off to the market I went to hunt down some frozen pastry dough.

I didn't pay attention to the fact that what I actually picked up was phyllo dough instead. I was distracted by my excitement for homemade samosas, apparently. But you can tell where this is going.

I could tell right after I tore open the package that something was wrong. And that's when I finally read the package. There may have been some curse words at my own expense. I could have gone right back to the store, but I was hungry, the filling was ready, and I decided I was up for a challenge.

It was the single most maddening kitchen experience I have ever had.

The potato and chicken mixture was divine (I left out the peas because I don't like them). But trying to spoon said mixture into an ultra-thin, delicate sheet of phyllo is the stuff of culinary nightmares.

For your consideration, what samosas from Samosa House actually look like:


and my sad attempt to create a baked version:


But this was not a complete failure because even though they don't look as pretty, my samosas were damn good.

I'm going to attempt these again in the very near future, and this time, they will be perfect. Both inside and out.

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