-We have this amazing lady
in our restaurant at Rahi,
and she makes all the amazing
cocktails and everything.
She'll come to us for the names
because we do
a lot of Indian-inspired
cocktails.
And then she made this cocktail
which was very specific.
The first thing I ask
her is, "What are the
ingredients you use?"
And she says, "There's this,
this, this, and bitter."
I said,
"Just name it Saasu Maa."
"Saasu Maa" means mother-in-law.
My wife doesn't get it,
so it's okay.
[ Laughter ]
♪♪
My name is Chintan Pandya.
I am executive chef
at Rahi and Adda NYC.
So, we are gonna make one
of the snack dishes from India,
which is known as samosa.
It's my personal favorite.
It's a very simple recipe.
The first thing that
we are gonna start off with
is boiling the potatoes.
The way we start it is we take
cold water, not hot or warm.
Just steep the potatoes
inside the water.
Add a little bit of salt
to the water.
One of the reasons
I use the whole potato
and I don't cut it
is once you cut it,
it will start absorbing a lot of
water, and it makes it starchy.
And you don't want your potato
to be starchy in a samosa.
It has to have a little bite and
a little dryness here and there.
And that's why we also start it
with cold water, so that --
When you do it
with the hot water,
it will absorb more water
and it will be more starchy.
So, while we are doing this --
it might take
around 20, 25, 30 minutes --
we'll start with our dough.
So, we have pre-measured flour
over here.
I'm gonna add the oil in.
And what we wanna do
is we wanna work with it
like we work with
a short-crust pastry.
So we are gonna just crumble it.
It's very important to do this.
As I said,
there are small things
which a lot of people don't do.
They will just say that,
"Oh, mix the recipe
in the dough-kneader
or in the KitchenAid."
But what it does is,
it won't form these crumbs.
And it's very important
to form these crumbs,
to get a very crusty texture
on your samosa.
This is the real way
of doing it in India.
A lot of places
which makes awesome samosas
still make the dough
with the hand.
I'm gonna add
a little ajwain to it.
Samosa is a deep-fried dish.
When you eat
a lot of fried dishes,
it creates gas in your body.
And ajwain had a medical quality
which is basically --
it's a flatulent.
It gets the gas
out of your body.
So that's the reason why
we add ajwain to the samosas.
I've added salt.
Give me a minute.
I'll just mix it up nicely.
You see the texture
of the flour?
When you just directly knead it
into the dough-kneader
or with the hand,
it won't give you this texture.
You need to have this texture
exactly coming through.
This is all due to the mixing
of oil with the flour.
So, we don't need
a very soft dough.
It needs to be a little hard.
You'll get a dough
which is something like this.
It's a very crumbly texture,
but that's okay.
That's what you need exactly.
Because you don't want
to add more water
because it will make it soft.
Now, what you do
is you work with the dough.
You see this texture?
This is what you exactly want.
It doesn't need
to be very smooth.
It has to have a little bit
of crumbliness,
which is giving it the more
short-crust qualities to it.
So we are just gonna rest
this dough
for a few minutes
at room temperature.
You don't need to chill it.
It needs to be
at the room temperature.
So, guys, this has been
boiling now for 20-plus minutes.
Let's have a look at it,
if it's done or not.
The way I do it is,
I just insert the knife
inside the potato.
If it slides through it,
it's cooked through and through.
If it doesn't, let it cook more.
So let's do that.
Yes, it's sliding through,
so it's done.
So, guys,
the potatoes are ready.
We're just gonna let it
cool down a bit.
Then we'll start peeling it.
Samosa is, like,
made in different parts
of the country
in different ways.
Most common one is the one
with the potato
and the green pea
made in Eastern, Western,
and Northern part of India.
The key ingredient,
which is the green pea
and the potato, remain the same.
The spicing goes
a little different.
Then there are a lot
of other communities.
Like, we have a community
like the Muslim community,
the Parsi community.
What they do is they do samosas
with lamb mince,
chicken mince, chicken liver.
I'm just gonna mash it randomly.
You don't need to be cutting it
very specifically or anything.
Just mash it up. So there should
be some chunks, some mashed.
We have everything ready
for our filling.
I've just got a pan over here.
I'm just gonna add
a little oil to it.
I've got some coriander
over here.
Coriander seeds, which is
roasted. Some cumin seeds.
I just tend to crush it a bit.
And when you crush it, I'm not
gonna cook the entire mixture.
I'm just gonna heat up
the mixture and mix it up.
I just want more flavors
out of it at this point of time.
Heating up the oil.
I'm just gonna add the spices.
I just take it
off the flame a bit.
Gonna add the green peas to it.
[ Sizzling ]
Gonna add a little salt.
Add a little turmeric to it.
[ Sizzling ]
Add a little chopped masala.
So, what all we have inside this
right now is we started off
with the crushed, roasted cumin
and coriander seeds.
Then we added the green peas
inside it.
We let it just sizzle a bit.
Then we added the salt.
Then we added the turmeric.
We mixed it up very well.
You can't use
raw turmeric powder,
so it needs to just
get a little cooked.
But once you have that, you
just add in the potatoes to it.
And that's the beauty of the
samosa. It needs to be uneven.
A very street-side
kind of a snack,
so it is just random.
Somewhere you'll find it mashed.
Somewhere you'll find
a chunk of it.
But always remember,
you have to keep on tasting it
because when you boiled the
potatoes, we added salt to it.
I'm just gonna
mix this up a bit.
It's ready. We just need
to cool it for some time.
♪♪
So, guys,
the dough is rested now.
What I'm doing is -- You can
roll it with hand and use it.
I'm gonna use machine over here,
which is a KitchenAid
pasta roller.
I love it. Never knew it existed
till the time I saw it.
Why don't you do it
with the hand,
and why do you do it
with the pasta roller?
I think what happens
by using this,
you can actually have a proper
training standard for your team
and they exactly know
at what thinness and thickness
you need to do it always.
What happens is that I can say,
"Oh, roll it thin."
Now, it's a very subjective term
when I say, "Roll it thin."
You might perceive it
in a different way.
Somebody else might perceive it
in a different way.
So this is a foolproof method
where everybody knows
this is where you roll it at.
What in Delhi happens is,
we do it in an oval mold,
so I'm gonna cut it like this
and you cut it into half.
So you hold it on your finger
like this.
You'll need a bit of water
with you.
So you apply the water
over here, turn it around,
get this cone,
and hold it like this,
and have your stuffing in.
Apply water again, close it.
And that's how your samosa
should be ready.
So, one of the keys to samosa,
when you know it's good, is this
has to come into the center.
It's aligned in the center.
So that means, you know,
the dough on either side
is not more or less.
It's in center exactly.
It fries right.
The bottom is right.
It looks like dumpling,
but, trust me, it's difficult.
It looks very simple
when somebody else does it.
It took me at least,
I would say, like --
I would've made like
400, 500 pieces
before I could
even get it right.
It's like, you know,
riding a bicycle.
Once you learn it, you learn it.
Then you don't forget it.
When you're doing it at home
and you do it once in a week,
what you can do is you can
make multiple of this,
as many as you want.
Freeze them, and whenever you
wanna use them just take it out,
let it defrost for some time,
and then you can fry it.
The right way of frying
the samosa is basically,
you fry it
at two different temperatures.
One is a low temperature.
I keep it around 225 to 250.
I fry it at a slow fire
for around 15, 20 minutes,
let it cook on its own,
then move it
to a hot temperature
which is around 375 degrees
to give it a good color to it.
When they make it in India
in those food stalls
and everything,
they don't have this facility.
They basically put it
on a low heat first,
and then just
once the batch is done,
they increase the high heat,
and then they remove it.
And then they let it, again,
cool down
before they add
the next batch in.
So I'm just gonna drop these in.
So, what's gonna happen is
they're gonna sink to the bottom
because they're really heavy.
Then it'll take time
to cook entirely.
And then slowly,
they'll start coming on top.
We're gonna move to a high heat,
which will give it
a more darker color.
What happens is, we get
a lot of scraps like this.
So, what my mother would do is,
she would actually
literally fry this.
And you can eat this as a snack.
You can just bite onto it.
It's like a crisp.
In India, we call something
like this a namak para.
"Namak" means salt.
"Para" means, like, a crisp.
A dish that you enjoy frying,
you won't enjoy baking it.
And I think baking a samosa
is a criminal offense.
A lot of people try to do it
for the health reasons
and everything.
But I feel that if you're gonna
enjoy a food, please enjoy it
in its original form
where it's actually fried.
Like, samosa is a fried dish.
It was never a baked dish.
It is just that we feel
that it makes it healthier.
That's why we're doing it.
But I don't find
much validity to it.
What has happened is that, uh,
now we have been frying it
for like the next
10, 15 minutes or so.
I'll fry it more 5 minutes.
We are getting
a light, light color.
You see this?
It's getting cooked now.
The crust is getting formed.
So it's never gonna get a
dark color like this over here,
because the temperature is low.
This is just to make sure it's
getting cooked inside properly.
And once we feel
that it's ready --
Now you see the samosas
now are on top.
So it's nearly getting cooked.
We'll just finish off over here.
So, here what we are doing
is we just need the color.
♪♪
You see this?
The color is coming.
♪♪
[ Crunching ]
The texture is very crumbly.
It's very hard,
and it has a bite to it.
That's what you are looking for.
And the mixture itself
is a little soft and salty.
That's what you want,
with chunks of potatoes
inside it --
some mashed, some whole.
To get the recipe
and the method,
please click on the link below.
♪♪
♪♪
