Wednesday 7 December 2011

Mushroom and Cashew Nut Samosas


From The New Tastes of India, Das Sreedharan, Headline, 2001.

Jamie Oliver describes this as ‘a really wicked book’. I guess he means it in a positive way. I have yet to find out whether it is really wicked or not. I don’t really pay much attention to selective quotes that are included on book covers.



I had to make a basic change to these samosas. The ingredients included ready-made samosa pastry which I was unable to obtain. I hunted around in some other cookery books and found one that used filo pastry. This made an easy wrapping to use though the samosas turned out rather large, like big pasties. Perhaps I should have cut the sheets of filo to the measurements in the Sreedharan recipe but followed that of the other book.



The filling was not difficult to make. It followed the usual method of popping mustard seeds first, then adding onions and curry leaves. The next stage was adding the spices, followed by the cashews to be cooked for a few minutes.

The potatoes, mushrooms and carrot were added and cooked until tender. When the mixture was cool it was wrapped in the pastry to be deep fried at the final step.

The recipe suggested using a tomato chutney from further on in the book. All that had to be done was to put the ingredients (tomatoes, green chllies, garlic and salt) in a blender and give them a quick burst. Some coriander leaves were added to the final mix.



The samosas were a good eat, not particularly out of the ordinary. I guess I wouldn’t make tem again.

The tomato chutney was more like a very liquid salsa and quite ordinary. I had an extra special salsa to compare it with that I had made the previous night with Mexican quesadillas. I think that salsa will be my benchmark for future one.

Taste: ✔✔✔
Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

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