Sunday, March 8, 2009

Stuff to freeze!

Day 67: Recipe 15

In my continued attempt to cook regularly, I scoured through my bookmarked items to try to find the next recipe, and decided to try Chicken Puff Samosas because

(a) I've never cooked anything like this before, and
(b) The pictures on this blog are so amazing that I'd gone way too long already without trying one of her recipes

Seriously, poke through her food blog. The pictures make my mouth water just from looking at them.

Actually, I'm going to go grab a samosa from the freezer before I finish writing this, because the pictures are making me hungry.

Chicken Puff Samosas

Chicken Puff Samosas modified from here
makes about 24

6 puff pastry sheets
1 chicken fillet (about 5 oz)
2 tsp tomato paste
1 tbsp sour cream
1/2 bell pepper
1/2 chili pepper
1/2 onion
1 T oil
honey
parsley
curry powder
paprika powder
pepper
salt
egg

If you got frozen puff pastry, pull it out so it has a chance to defrost.

Mince up the bell pepper, onion, and chili. You can peel it if you want, but I didn't, and didn't really find any issues with the texture.

Cut up the chicken, and then sprinkle some salt, pepper, and curry powder, and then mix it all up. Make sure everything's well coated I under-seasoned and then ended up adding a lot more later, so go generously - especially with the curry. But if you're sensitive to spice and taste, know that you can add later.

Heat up the oil and toss the chicken in, cooking it until it's really well done. Then dump the chicken into a bowl, but don't clean out the pan, and toss in the veggies (add more oil if you need it).

Cook the veggies over medium until the onions translucent, and then add in the tomato paste and sour cream. The original recipe had pineapple & pineapple juice, but I'm not a fan of pineapple, so I did a squeeze of honey to substitute the sweetness, without having to do the pineapple taste. Mix it all up, and then let it simmer over low heat while you tend to the chicken.

Get the chicken shredded, whether that's by hand, with two forks, or just chopping it up into little bits. Toss it into the veggies, and taste to see if you need to add anything again.

Taste a second time, because it's really good.

Taste a third them, and then tell yourself that you need to stop, or else you won't have anything left to fill the puffs.

Grab a small bunch of flat leaf parsley and chop it up. Then stir it into the chicken veggie mixture.

This must be the longest recipe I've typed up yet.

Sprinkle a cutting board with flour and put the pastry sheet down, and then sprinkle it again. This was my first time dealing with this kind of dough, so know that it's fragile and can be sticky. Roll it out so that it's flatter, and then cut each piece into quarters. Put some of the filling on it and then fold it over to pinch it up. The original recipe said to fold it on the diagonal to make triangles, but I much preferred the fold-in-half-to-make-rectangles ones because there was a more even meat-to-puff ratio.

Plop them on the cookie sheet. (Delicately, so they don't fall apart!) They're not going to expand by much, so you can put them relatively close together.

Okay, so this next part is optional, but fun. To add a little color to the outside, you can crack an egg, and brush it on it. To add a little taste to the outside, sprinkle paprika on the now-wet dough. Or, if you're completely uncoordinated like I am, mix up the egg and the paprika, and then brush the mixture over the dough.

Get your oven to 400 degrees, then put them in there. Leave them there for 12 to 15 minutes, and then take them out.

Eat.

Survey Says
They were GOOD. My husband said that they're "probably some of the best samosas [he's] ever had," but I suspect he's exaggerating a bit because he doesn't want to do the dishes. I think I want to try them with a non-pufflike dough, or maybe I just need to perfect working with the dough.

We froze them after cooking because I want more non-microwave-dinner stuff in our fridge. While writing this I ate 3 that I'd defrosted and they were great.

I want to try figuring out how to make veggie ones, but in the mean time I'm going to love eating the ones we have!

I love cooking.

2 comments:

  1. Save me some. I want to try one of these when we visit you next month.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay! Or, if we eat them all, I'll make them again.

    ReplyDelete