Vegetable Samosas

The samosa traveled to the Indian subcontinent from Central Asia and Persia along trade and Mughal routes, with references in 13th–14th-century Delhi Sultanate texts (Amir Khusrau wrote about it around 1300). The Persian sanbosag was meat-stuffed; Indian cooks substituted potato (which arrived from the Americas via the Portuguese in the 16th century) and made it a vegetarian street food.

Central Asian sambusak that came south with Persian traders by the 13th century — Ibn Battuta ate it at Muhammad bin Tughlaq's court. The maida-and-ghee dough has to rest 30 minutes or it bubbles instead of crisping.

A triangular fried pastry, golden and bubbled, that shatters at first bite into a hot filling of cumin-spiced potato, peas, sometimes carrot, with a green chili buzz at the back. Eaten hand-to-mouth, dipped in tamarind chutney (sweet-sour) or mint-coriander chutney (green and sharp). The shell should crackle; if it bends, it sat too long.

The dough is the divider between good and bad samosa: maida flour with hot ghee or oil rubbed in (this short-textures the gluten), kneaded firm, rested, then rolled thin. Fried in two stages — low oil first to set the layers without browning, then hotter to color — gives the bubbled crust. One-temp frying gives an even brown but soft shell. Filling must be cold and dry going in or the pastry steams from inside.