Let's stuff these samosas!

I probably don't need to tell you what a samosa is. They're so famous that even M&S sell them. But what you probably don't know is how far young Indu would sink in her seat when Momma Kumar would say "should we make samosas on the weekend?". 
Let's make three things clear before I start:

 1) When Mum asked IF we should make samosas over the weekend it was not a suggestion. She was just giving me a heads up.
2) My place in the samosa factory line was a given. and I was not happy about it.
3) The samosas would take over the entire weekend. Mum would remind me not to make plans for the weekend. then we would make them. Then we would spend most of the weekend eating them.

 To begin with we'd argue which samosas to make, minced lamb or potato. Even though we both knew that we'd end up making both. We had already got our aprons on so we may as well do it properly.

I can hear you asking "my god! why don't you just buy them from the shop?!" and it is a fair point. The shop bought potato ones are not so bad -if you know where to go. But I will tell you what my mother told me all the time growing up: You never know what they put inside the meat ones. Given the massive horse meat scandal my mothers words are oddly prophetic!
 

Store bought vegetable samosas. Perfect to eat in the car ride from uni!

Chicken Samosa from my friend's henna party. Definitely not my favourite kind of Samosa.

That is the reason we made samosas at home. Though I have a sneaky feeling that there were other things going on in our samosa weekends. After the initial reluctance I quite enjoyed making samosas with my mum (granted she did most of it), but I remember her laughing, talking to me about making samosas with her mother.

My mum is one of four sisters and she tells this one anecdote about making the samosas for the wedding reception of her eldest sister. I remember my mothers doughy hands sealing the samosas while she told me how they made HUNDREDS of samosas for my aunts wedding. And how they were tired and how her mother ran the kitchen and everything went off without a hitch. and she took the most pride in telling me how wonderful it was to watch everyone eat the samosas they made at home.

The memory of making samosas with my is one of my favourite childhood memories. Looking back, my father and brother would conveniently disappear when we made then and reappear when they heard them sizzling in the oil. Cheeky. Nevertheless, it felt like a good days work when we counted up all the samosas we made, placed them carefully in the freezer.  We put aside the ones we would have for lunch that day.

Samosas are great! You can enjoy them anywhere...
Piping hot samosas from a roadside cafe, passed around the family, going from New Delhi to Punjab. Or having a sneaky one in the car before you take them home, carefully balancing the chutney on the armrest.  And meandering through the shopping district in Punjab, samosa in hand,  taking quick hot bites because you've seen a saree that needs closer inspection...
But my favourite samosa memory is one that is repeated often. Samosas are delivered to the table at my aunts house. Everybody smiles and politely takes one samosa. you break open your samosa and either rejoice at having picked a lamb samosa (they're always so much better) or you quickly gobble up the potato one so you have another go at getting a lamb one. Like the Karela, homemade samosas are prestigious. Someone is sharing their time, effort and love with you.

please excuse the dopey expression!

How to spend Easter weekend making Samosas:
First, tell your parents you won't be coming home for the holidays. They will try to ply you with promises of lamb curry, shopping trips and your weight in Easter eggs.

Second, make samosas Saturday night, video call everybody so they can see you are making them from scratch (play it cool) and then fry them on Sunday. You are too tired to eat on Saturday night.

Finally, make Aloo Tikki (potato cakes) from the leftover filling. coax/guilt/threaten your flatmate to make chickpeas to go along with the samosas and then FEAST.


The ultimate test for me was to make my very own samosas from scratch. It is not a task for the faint hearted and you can't give up half way. So spurred on by the instructions from my mother and holding my trusty potato peeler I began.

Filling

I'll talk you through the process with the photographs I took. I took visual evidence because I don't think anyone would believe me otherwise. 

So first I made the filling. My mother told me what went in the filling but otherwise everything else was done from childhood memory. 

Boil some potatoes until soft

 

while the potatoes are boiling. You can get started on spicy part. Fry some onions until golden brown and add salt, chillies,crushed garlic and ginger. Add mustard seeds too. You can put peas in too but I hate them.

Mash the potatoes and add the onion ensemble. mix well.

Pastry

Everybody I told was taken aback when I told them I made the pastry too. The conversation when something like this:

I made samosas.

from scratch?

yep.

well done. you bought the pastry though right?

um, no. Made that too.

what?! wow...

If truth be told, I didn't even know you COULD buy the pastry for samosas! (If I had known that I would have bought it instead!)

No store bought pastry, no nonsense.
 

I drizzled a bit of oil into plain flour and kneaded it, adding warm water as I went. the onion in my dough is a trespasser.

 

By this point you will be kneading (get it?) a break.

when it is smooth leave it to sit for 15mins

Put a flat pan on the stove and wait for it to heat as you roll out the dough as if you were making a chapatti. Long, thin and round is the aim. You place them on the pan and wait for them to change colour slightly. do not cook them!

Cut the pastry in half. Right down the middle, as equally as you can. I remember my mum letting me cut the first pastry, it was always wonky. Every time.

These will the the triangles that you fill. I made 18 samosas. Slightly more than I wanted too but when your flatmates threaten to hide your Nutella you don't mind making 10 extra samosas.

Let's stuff those samosas!

Right. So here we are, the moment where this all ends. At this point I was very tired, my dishevelled hair is white with flour and my fingers are overworked by the kneading and the rolling. I clear the work top and pile the dishes high in the sink. I roll up my sleeves, take a histrionic deep breath, roll back my shoulders and with renewed energy say 

"All right. Come on. Let's stuff these samosas." 

And so it began...I emerged from a puff of flour with a small amount of plain flour in a bowl to which I added warm water to make it runny. This is the glue that will seal the samosas.

 Then I got a small spoon, made and sealed the pastry in a cone shape. Then I carefully filled the samosa being careful not to tear the pastry.

Unfortunately after the first stuffing we had a casualty. This pioneering first samosa-to-be-stuffed plummeted 1m to his death.

His death was not in vain.

The next day I took the leftover filling mixed it with some gram flour and made Aloo Tikki to have with the Samosas for dinner. My flatmate, as predicted, made chickpeas to go with them. 

Chana. or chick pea curry.

Aloo Tikki ready to be fried

Samosas are deep fried and Aloo Tikki is shallow fried

Scrumdiddlyumtious!

Finally, dinner time.

Final thoughts

Making samosa was definitely satisfying. There is an unfamiliar fuzzy satisfaction that builds in your chest whenever anyone says  well done or delicious! But the real test will be when I take them home tomorrow for my parents to try. If they like them I'll have to whip up a batch all the time and if they don't I can reclaim my seat as a passive member of team Kumar. And so we wait.

Daljit Nagra

Baby Crocodiles

I have poured over this entry for weeks, there is so much to say about this dish, so please be patient if I don't get to the point as fast as you hope. You see, many of the dishes found in Indian restaurants have been anglicised and are palatable to British tastes, such as Saag Aloo, Chicken tikka, Lamb Biryani but there is one dish that rarely makes it to a restaurant menu. The formidable Karela.

The karela is not popular for one main reason, the taste. When I was young my mother and father used to encourage me and my brother to eat this dish (which we said looked like baby crocodiles), as you can imagine, the dish that was laboriously prepared was seldom met with smiles. The truth is it is now one of my favourite dishes. Why? The bitter taste can only be appreciated by a mature palate and the appreciation of this dish comes from the efforts made to cook it.

The karela, or bitter gourd, is a dish that is complex, time consuming and therefore prestigious. This seeded dish has an odd taste: a taste that a child cannot appreciate. You must grow to love this dish, and not just because it has a multitude of health benefits.

This dish can be prepared in two ways, by stuffing the karela, or my chopping it up.
I prefer the stuffed version because I enjoy the spicy stuffing. A good instructional video eludes me therefore I will paint a small picture of how the stuffed karela is made, this by no means is a recipe!

Stage One: 
Firstly, the bumpy green skin of the karela is grated off with a blunt knife and put to the side.

the seeds and skin

 The gourd is then sliced vertically an inch from the top and an inch from the bottom, the seeds are extracted and put aside with the skin, the karela should be hollow.

Then the karela's are opened up a little and left on the side while the stuffed is prepared.

Karela seeds, very hard to eat!

Stage Two:
Your attention is now on the stuffing.
The best part of the Karela is the bittersweet onion stuffing so you will locate a frying pan and heat some oil, cumin and fennel seeds. to which you add finely chopped onions and saute.
Add tomatoes, ginger, tumeric powder, punjabi garam masala and salt, stirring well.
Leave the stuffing aside to drain
 Stage Three:  
Take the stuffing and the hollowed karelas and begin to stuff the hollows. Once sufficiently stuffed, tie with thread.

hollowed karela being stuffed with onions and spices

Stage four:
The tied karela's should now be deep friend until golden brown. They should be served hot and with chappati.

Tied and ready to be fried

Fry it!

Hot chappati

I forgot to take a photo of mine, so here it what it would look like!

With the image of the karela dish fresh in your minds, it is time to turn our attention to the poem that inspired this post: Karela! by Daljit Nagra 
This poem appears in Nagra's collection of poems Look We Have Coming to Dover! a collection of poems that have a strong character and heritage.

Karela!

Gourd, grenade-shaped,

okra-green. I prise

each limb of warty flesh,

disembowel each indi-

gestible red-seed memory

of regal pomegranate.

This dish from my past, I recall

mum would embalm the innards

with amalgam of fried onion

to gum the snarled temper.

Mummy-bound with string

for a mustard-popping pan.

then sealed. Masala creeps...

Karela, ancient as crocodile,

no matter I kiln-crisp

each skin for ages, proudly

before my English lover,

when the lid comes off

each riven body shrivelled

yet knurl-fisted and gnarled-

blackening centuries of heat

with a feedback of sizzling

smoke and wog- rescinders

stoking my mind with inedible

historical fry-ups. The rebel

ethnic of our ethnic gumbo!

Hail to the King of Bile

as I bite a mean mouthful

swamping me down to the tracts

of my roots- my body craves

taste of home but is scolded

by shame of blood-desertion

(that simmers in me unspoken),

save that we are in love-

that you bite as well your mind

with karela-curses, requited

knowledge before our seed

can truly blood, before

our tongue is pure poppy!

Nagra’s poem creates a palpable sense of the thickness of karela skin through the rhythm of the poem the enjambment of “I prise/each limb of warty flesh/disembowel each indi-/gestible red-seed memory” and the slow pace of the poem add to the sense of depth and also mimics the stealthy movements of a crocodile, which it is described as in the second stanza. The idea of a karela as a reptile is one that extends through two stanzas of the poem from its introduction as it has “limb[s] of warty flesh” and a “snarled temper” with a movement that “creeps”. The effect of these on the reader encourages the reading of the karela as a reptile, a comparison which is most obvious from a child’s perspective. Furthermore, the narrator seems to be recollecting his memories of the dish and the childishness of the crocodile-karela crossover is evident of that as the narrator describes the sinister “sizzling”, “smoke”, “knurl-fisted and gnarled”. The poem ends in the present; the narrator is an adult and with a “mean mouthful” remembers his first thoughts of his meal and it exemplifies his dual identities; the karela is a dish, like a reptile, which cannot be tamed. It is defiantly Indian and no effort to anglicise it for the curry house can take away its characteristic Indian flavour.