ss - yes, I'm getting quite close but there's probably room for a bit of further improvement. Purely for my taste buds - and I don't expect anyone else to agree - I now prefer the mixture that's the best so far, to perhaps 90% of BIRs.

Great looking recipe, I have not made Samosa for a few years so will be giving this one a go, Thanks CH.

Quote from: George on March 16, 2015, 08:45 AM
The emphasis of this thread appears to be on the pastry wrapping - fair enough - but I decided to try and get the flavour of the filling right, before I spend time on the pastry.

In my case, most of the samosas we have here in the US are the potato and pea variety, for which I have cloned both takeaway and restaurant (traditional) styles of filling accordingly to my own taste.  I've never had a meat-based samosa but am tempted to try one sometime.  My suspicion is that the takeaway variety might use mix powder but a more traditional one will differ and likely have spicing that is more geared toward the flavor of the lamb.

Regardless, the biggest issue I've had myself in recreating the perfect samosas is the pastry which is now excellent as well.  Prior attempts were quite disappointing and definitely left for a less-than-idea experience even with good filling.

Thanks to Zap for bumping CH's recipe back up. It's been a while since I made these and reading back through the recipe just makes me want to make some more. Must get to the shops for some lamb mince!

Had a go at these today and just enjoyed a few for lunch. Not sure why but when I used the ingredients specified in post 1 for the pastry I just ended up with a soggy messy wet slurry. Tried to adjust it back with adding extra flour and ended up with a very tough dough. It will take some more tries to figure out the right rations.

Still, I made the best of it and the filling worked well (veggie style). This was just the first batch cooling

I just made up a batch of this and I'm very pleased with it now. When I tried it for the first time it lacked flavour for my taste so I now double all the spices and that makes it perfect for me.

Also, using Morrisons frozen mince, I started off by browning it with the intention of draining off the fat as suggested but quickly realised that there was minimal excess fat so I decided to quickly throw in all the other ingredients and cook it on for a few more minutes to soften the onion a bit. And I have to say it's none the worse for having done this and it saves all the messing about with separately cooking and draining the mince etc., assuming that the mince has as little fat as this batch did that is.

So this is my preferred recipe now but in future I'll just throw everything in at the same time for convenience. The doubling of all the spices is the crucial part for me though.

Quote from: Sverige on June 21, 2015, 12:19 PM
Still, I made the best of it and the filling worked well (veggie style). This was just the first batch cooling

If I saw those fresh out, they would not make it to the cooling stage, they look pretty good to me.....

Finding some leftover cooked potatoes today in the fridge, I had a brainwave and decided samosas were in order, so I revisited this great recipe. The vegetarian version of filling recipe from the OP worked well with 200g cooked potato, quarter of a mug full of frozen peas and the same amount of finely chopped carrots. 750g of potato, as mentioned in the OP, seems way too much for those spice quantities IMHO.

Well the samosas were great and because I used only half the filling up, I'll be cooking more tomorrow. Just a simple classic indian snack and having scoffed a few for lunch I wonder why I don't cook these more often.  I guess they took an hour, start to finish. Not much effort for a good result.

I picked up a set of pasty moulds in Lidl - I think they're mentioned earlier in this thread too. Certainly make the process of filling the samosas much quicker and easier, but do you get to call them samosas when they look so much like Cornish pasties??

My top tips are to make the pastry a day ahead and leave it in the fridge in a plastic bag or cling film overnight. Having made batches with freshly made pastry and pastry rested overnight the texture of the overnight pastry is far superior. All that flakiness and pimples you see in the photo seems to be accentuated by a long rest between mixing and rolling the dough.

The "dough cutters" as Lidl calls them have a cutter to the rear side which cuts a circle of  pastry, the this fits into the hollowed out top side so you can fill them, wet the outside with flour/water mixture then squeeze the whole thing shut to seal them.

My other top tip - wait a minute after rolling the dough before you cut the circles. The dough springs back and if you cut it immediately you end up with a pastry circle just too small to seal properly when you close the thing after filling it.  These were deep fried at 180C for 4 minutes to cook.

Never got round to trying these but yours are certainly giving me the urge. Cornish or not, they look excellent.