VEGETABLE SAMOSAS

It’s hard to say how many samosas you can expect to make with
one packet of filo pastry; it depends on the size and how much
pastry you waste in the process, but as a rough guide you should
get between eight and 12.
There’s no need to be nervous about cooking with filo pastry
either; it’s more resilient than it looks, but for some reason I always
find the ready-made filo pastry from the chill cabinet easier to
handle than the frozen stuff, I don’t know why.
This is yet another good way of using up leftover potatoes –
boiled or mashed – although it’s easy enough to cook a few
potatoes from scratch if you don’t have leftovers, and this is one
recipe where it won’t matter if you resort to a packet of instant
mash instead of using fresh potatoes; the overall texture and
flavour of the other ingredients is a great disguise. In fact, the best
thing would be to mix the potatoes and vegetables with a couple
of spoonfuls of ready-made curry paste, but because one of my
children is severely allergic to nuts I can’t use them – unfortunately,
because some of them are really good – which is the only reason
this recipe has the spices in powdered form.
Finally, I don’t know why anyone would deep-fry samosas
when you get a much better result and a lot less grease by simply
brushing them with melted butter and baking them in the oven
for about ten minutes.
1 packet of filo pastry sheets (1⁄2 lb/250 g)
1⁄2 small packet of frozen mixed mini vegetables
2–3 medium-sized potatoes, mashed or boiled
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp cumin
2 oz (50 g) butter
Oil
Method
1. Put the frozen vegetables in a saucepan of boiling water and
leave to stand for a couple of minutes while you get the rest of
the ingredients ready. (No need to cook them properly, they
just need to be softened up a bit.)
2. Drain the vegetables and mix with the mashed potato or diced
boiled potatoes and spices.
3. Grease one or two oven trays with oil, preheat the oven to Gas
Mark 5 (190ºC) and melt the butter in the microwave.
4. Lay the sheets of filo pastry out on a clean work surface, two or
three at a time depending on how much room you’ve got, and
cut into long rectangular strips; you should get about four strips
from each sheet of filo.
5. Place a dessertspoonful of filling on the left-hand side of each
strip then fold the right-hand side of the pastry over diagonally
to make a triangle. Carry on folding the samosa over, keeping
the triangular shape, until you come to the end of the pastry,
then brush generously with melted butter, gently sealing the
joins, and place the samosa on the oven tray.
6. Cook the samosas in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until the
pastry is a deep golden brown. Eat hot or cold, with or without
rice, or as a side dish with another curry.