Empañadas and Samosas

I’ve wanted to try my hand at making samosas for a while now, and last weekend I finally decided to give it a try. But I didn’t want to do deep frying, because it’s messy, more work, and not as good for me. So, I dug up a recipe I’ve got for empañadas and decided to try the pastry portion of that as a solution for baked samosas.

What I ultimately did that weekend was make a bunch of pastry rounds using my empañada recipe, and then making two kinds of filling, one being my standard empañada filling (chorizo, potato, peppers, onions and spices) and another being a new (to me) recipe for more traditional Indian samosa filling, (ground meat, potato, onion and spices). The ingredient list for both fillings are somewhat similar, but the oil and spices used gave dramatically different flavors and results.

That first night, I assembled the pastry rounds and fillings in the standard empañada or calzone fashion; lay down a pastry round, spoon in some filling, fold the round over and seal the edge, creating a puffy semi-circle of yumminess.

Later in the week, I tried again, this time cutting the pastry rounds into semi-circles and folded and sealed them into more traditional samosa shape.

I was worried that the thin pastry dough would be too fragile and would tear apart in the assembly or as the pastry expanded in the oven, but in fact they held together wonderfully. And where the traditional empañada shape tended to rise a lot, leaving a hollow pocket only partially filled with filling, the samosa shape didn’t swell or rise, and was packed with fabulous filling all the way through.

Garnished with a mint-cilantro chutney, they all turned out fabulously, both shapes, both fillings. I’m inordinately pleased, because I added a new recipe to my repertoire, because I cooked an entirely new (to me) cuisine, and because baking them instead of frying turned out so well. It’s a cooking hat-trick! Yum!