Hing ke samose or shingara

Samosas or shingara as we call in bengali, are an integral part of every Indian home and I absolutely love having them. My mom makes the most wonderful samoses with cauliflower and potato stuffing. Another place that I remember serving crispy and yummy samoses with ginger chutney was in Binnaguri. When I was working in Kolkata a small shop in Mirza Galib Street used to serve one of the best hing (asatifoetida) ke samoses. I have tried to recreate those samoses with help from my mother and it came out quite tasty.

Ingredients

For the stuffing

Boiled potato – 4 to 5

Peas – handful

Ginger- 1 tsp (crushed)

Asafoetida (hing) – a pinch

Green chillies – 1 tsp (chopped finely)

Black pepper - a pinch

Sugar – pinch

Ghee or clarified butter – 1 tsp

Salt – as per taste

For the dough

Flour – 2 cups or 300 gms approx

Baking powder – 1 tbsp

Oil – 10 to 15 ml

Salt – as per taste

Water -  as per requirement.

 It is better to do the stuffing first so that the mixture cools down before we put it in the dough.

1.    Heat little oil in a fry pan and add crushed ginger alongwith the hing. Be careful that they don’t burn.

2.   Add the boiled potatoes and the green peas. Saute for some time.

3.   Now add salt, green chillies, pepper, sugar one by one to the potato mixture and continue to saute them.

4.   Once the peas have softened turn off the heat and sprinkle ghee over the mixture. Leave it aside to cool down to room temperature.

5.   For the dough, mix baking powder and salt in the flour. Now add oil little by little to the flour. Keep on mixing with your fingers till it resembles sand grains. Now add water to this mixture and shape it into a soft dough. Keep this dough in the refrigerator for half n hour. This will make it easy to roll.

6.    Now divide the dough into equal portions and roll out into round shapes (14cms long approx). Do not roll out the dough too thin. Cut the rolled out dough into equal halves. Each half makes one samosa.

7.   Now take both the edges of cut strip of the dough and shape it like a cone and join both the ends using little water. Fill the stuffing in the cone and seal the mouth of the samosas again with little water.

8.     Deep fry them in sufficient oil till they turn golden brown.

9.   Serve hot with tomato sauce or chutney.

 

 Tip: To enhance the flavour of hing in the samosas you can add little hing to the water when you are mixing the dough or when you are sealing the edges.

 

 

 

 

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