Cousins Club Meets Baked Spinach Samosas

   It seems as though the Par-Tay-ing has been non stop this holiday season. Between going out and eating, going to friends' houses and eating, entertaining out of town visitors/family and eating, there's only been one constant. Eating. We've certainly been doing a lot of that. One of the most anticipated events of the last few weeks was the Cousins Party we had at the house a couple of days before Christmas. Patsy had been freshly groomed and bathed and was waiting by the tree.

   My cousins came down from Eugene and Portlandia while on the way to visit more cousins in San Francisco, who were unable to come up to Sonoma because of entertaining in-laws from England. The bunch of us that did get together had a great time. I'd almost have to call us the Facebook Cousins because that's generally how we communicate, via FB and Twitter and IM'ing, we stay in touch. Actual RL visiting, not so much. So it was time overdue for a reunion. Especially since there was one new cousin added to the mix, my cousin Derek's little boy Isaac who just turned 8 months old. Isaac's mom was catching a later flight that day because of work.  Of course the littlest cousin had to greet my mom.

  
 And was a big hit with my dad.

Cousin Pat and her grandson.

Cousin Al and my mom. And Patsy and Isaac got acquainted.

So what do you feed a bunch of cousins of varying ages? Cheeses and crackers and homemade fig preserves, wines and sodas, lemon olive oil tart and apple caramel tart with whipped cream. Apple sauce made with ground organic Gravensteins and well water. And of course Easy Baked Spinach Samosas.

   I love these because they whip up fast in a pinch, the filling can be made ahead of time and they can even be baked, refrigerated and reheated. You gotta love that. Another fast step, frozen spinach can be used. This is the basic 'go to' in a hurry appetizer, party finger food. As long as you have a few basics in the house (frozen spinach, and frozen fillo dough) this is doable like almost instantly.

Baked Spinach Samosas

Here's What You Need:

 1 package of Fillo Factory frozen fillo dough
 3 packs of frozen chopped spinach
 1 finely chopped onion
 2 fionely chopped shallots
 2 pinches of nutmeg or to taste
 1/2 cup crumbled roictotta salata cheese
 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
 the grated zest of 1 lemon
 2 Tbs of olive oil

 Here's What To Do:

 Defrost the fillo dough (follow package instructions)
 Defrost the frozen spinach
 Preheat oven to 500 degrees

In a large skillet or kadhai heat 2 Tbs of olive oil
When the oil is hot toss in the finely chopped onion and the finely chopped shallots
When the onion and shallot are translucent add in the defrosted chopped spinach and stir it around until it's warmed through and cooked
Add in the crumbled ricotta salata, parmesasn, lemon zest and nutmeg until everything is combined well and the parmesan is melted.
The ricotta salata will not melt in the skillet , it melts in the baking just make sure it's mixed in evenly.

 Note: 
 Another way I dress these up is by adding 1/2 cup of sultana raisins and 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts while cooking the spinach. These were eliminated from this recipe since my mother hates raisins and all nuts.

As to how to turn these into samosas, follow the directions  for this recipe right here (with pictures)
Bake them in  the 500 degree oven for about 8 minutes, then turn them and bake for an additional  6  minutes or so until they're crispy.

   How did they work out? They're Cousin approved! Even my mother who is notoriously suspicious of everything I cook and is the pickiest of eaters, loved them and asked for the recipe.
Here's photographic proof.

 Note the shock on my face. The only one who didn't sample the samosas (aside from Isaac who's just getting teeth) was Patsy who had found another source of treats.

Amazing what a husky will put up with to get food.  We had a great afternoon of reminiscing and the sort of catching up one can't do on FB or Twitter.

And so the Holiday fun continues. One fun thing is I'm giving away a great Hand Beater courtesy of the good people at OXO.

If you'd like to win this beater here's what to do:

Leave a comment at the bottom of this post and let me know what you'll whip up with this cool OXO Beater
For an extra entry :
Follow @OXO on Twitter
Follow @kathygori on Twitter
And let me know that you have.

   I'll be choosing the winner on Dec 30th at 12:00 noon.PST via random.org  Because of shipping rules, winner must  be resident in the US.

   So what else is happening?  Our Christmas house guest has gone back to LA, and the prep now begins for Alan's  annual New Year's Eve Birthday feast. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori
 

Get Your Party On With Baked Crab Samosas

 
   It's the first week of December and already party season is in full swing here in Wine Country. One of the main harbingers of the season in Northern California is the coming of the crabs, sort of like the running of the bulls but pinchier.

   Growing up in San Francisco, one thing we always looked forward to each year was the arrival of fresh sweet Dungeness Crab. Visiting Fishermans Wharf at Christmas time, we'd see Santa standing in front of his cauldron ringing a bell for donations. We'd toss a handful of coins in the pot and move a little way down toward another sort of cauldron billowing steam. No Santa here but a guy (usually one of our neighbors) wrapped in a white smock surrounded by a pile of blush pink crabs and that amazing aroma that always reminds me of the scent of apple blossoms, fresh cooked Dungeness crab.

Sometimes my dad and members of our parish's Fathers Club would go and help out at my friend Cindy La Torres dad's place.

   Crab season in San Francisco was such a big deal to the Italian community it was hard to imagine Christmas without it. Growing up in my neighborhood, you'd have thought Santa's sleigh came pulled by crabs. So it was pretty shocking when the season arrived this year with no crab for Thanksgiving. The reason for this was twofold. One, there was a breakdown in the price negotiations between the crabbers and the processors. This resulted in a Dungeness Crab Strike. So the boats stayed in port and the crabs stayed out of the pot over the Thanksgiving holiday. Finally, a couple of weeks ago an agreement was reached and the crab started flowing into the local markets. At least around here.

   It was after a series of Tweets with sustainable seafood expert Jon Rowley that I started thinking about crab. Jon had asked about the start of the season here in Sonoma and what price crabs were selling for. That started me thinking about crab and the holidays and Indian food. I'd been working on a number of recipes that could be whipped up for holiday entertaining, easy takes on Indian street/finger food. South Indian cuisine features a large number of spicy crab dishes and I'd been wanting to try one or two. What better time to start than the ending of the crab blockade?

   We were going to have friends over for a movie night and I wanted to fix something easy and fast. I thought about taking a Goan crab recipe and turning it into a  baked samosa filling. A lot of Indian crab recipes call for crab cooked in a wet curry, served in the shell similar to an Italian cioppino. I wanted a dry curry that would not soak through the samosa wrapper. Finally, after studying various ways of cooking crab in a "dry" sauce, I figured a way out of my dampness problem and into a dry Goan Baked Crab Samosa.

Baked Crab Samosas

Here's What You'll Need:

About 2 lbs of cooked crab (this equals about 1/2 pound of crab meat.) I had the fish guy crack the shells for me for easier extraction.
8 dried red chilies
1 cup of dried unsweetened coconut
1 large onion halved and thinly sliced
8 large shallots
1 Tbs of tamarind pulp
1 tsp garam masala
1/4 tsp of turmeric
1 tsp of cumin seeds
1 Tbs of oil
A few curry leaves (optional)
1 package of Fillo Factory organic filo dough, defrosted

Here's What To Do: 

Grind the red chilies, coconut, cumin seeds, and shallots in a food processor or blender to a fine paste.
Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet or kadhai.
When the oil is hot, add in the thinly sliced onion
Add in a few (3 or 4 ) curry leaves if you have them.
Cook the onion until it's translucent
Add in the ground spice/shallot paste and stir fry that  for a few minutes or until the spices are mellowed.

Add in the tamarind pulp and salt to taste.
Stir things around for a minute or two.
Finally add in the crab.

Stir until the shredded fresh cooked crab is thoroughly mixed in.
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

Assembling the Samosas:

Melt 1 stick of butter. This is going to be used to brush the phyllo dough  and make it crisp up nicely.
It's important to  keep the dough protected from the air while you're working with it.
Unroll the phyllo dough and place a sheet of it on whatever surface you're working on.

Cover the dough you're not using with a damp towel.
Brush the sheet of phyllo dough with some melted butte.
Lay a second sheet of phyllo dough on top of the first and brush that with melted butter also.
Slice the phyllo dough the long way into 2 and 1/2 inch strips.

Take a sheet of waxed paper and lay it lightly over the strips you are not working with to keep them moist and pliable.
Take 1 tsp of the crab mixture and place it in the corner of one of the strip s filling the corner.

Now here's the trick! Fold the corner over into a triangle shape. Just like you were folding a flag. You remember that from Scouts right?!

Keep folding just like that right up the strip until you have a puffy little triangle.

Lay the little triangle onto a greased cookie sheet and brush it with a bit of melted butter.
Each sheet should give you about 3 or 4 little triangles, and  all together the entire recipe should give you perhaps 30 or 35 samosas!
Pop the samosas into the oven and bake them for about 8 minutes, then flip them over and bake an additional 6 mionutes or so until they are crispy.
I sprayed my cookie sheets, and when I flipped the samosas, I sprayed them with a bit of non stick spray to cut down on all the butter.
Take themout and serve them up.

They go well with a bit of tomato chutney dipping sauce.

   It's party time!  The crab mixture can be made ahead, but once you're ready to cook and eat the samosas, always remember, hot samosas wait for no man/woman. Bake them and enjoy them right away!

   Coming up next, more party food for those holiday feasts where I go to town with an adaptation of my friend Terri's super-best cookies, this time turned gluten free. And I've got a new kitchen tool and one for you too courtesy of the nice people at OXO. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

Baked Samosas, Take Two! Or Three or Four.....

    I love fried foods (who doesn't?) and I also love being able to fit into my pants occasionally. Yes, I could enjoy fried foods endlessly and live in yoga pants which have the added plus of actually giving  me the feeling of doing a good hour or two of yoga without going anywhere near a mat. I've noticed a similar effect with my running shoes, and my bike shorts. I feel so much better just wearing them! I mean, why can't I get my ass into my jeans anymore? I'm wearing my yoga pants for two hours everyday!!!
   Sure. I can rationalize. But occasionally I have to leave Sonoma and go to a meeting at a studio in LA. I have to put on real pants (I refuse to go near pajama jeans!) and real shoes. I know myself and I know if I go there, the next step is walking around in a Snuggie. Then comes the clapper and fried everything. I have to draw the line somewhere.

  This is the main reason that no matter how much I love the taste of fried anything, I seem to be on an endless search for the ultimate baked anything. One of the main anythings on my list are samosas.
  For my birthday a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to serve an array of Indian snack/street food. I was planning on serving vadai, those delicious, fried, savory doughnuts. Since I was going over the falls in a deep fryer with one dish, I figured I'd better be on my best behavior when it came to the samosas I'd planned on serving.
  I'd attempted baked samosas at my birthday last year, and while they certainly worked using regular samosa dough, they lacked the necessary crunch which is required of a true samosa. Not wanting to give up, I started looking around for something that would crisp up when I shoved it into the oven. I found my answer pretty quickly. Phyllo dough! Yes, phyllo dough is not just for spanakopita anymore!
   I bought myself a box of organic phyllo dough (3 bucks and change at Whole Foods for a pound of the stuff) and set out to make baked samosas.

Baked Samosas

Here's what to do:

  Make your samosa filling. Now, there are many fillings for samosas. I used a basic potato and pea filling. This can be made ahead of time and refrigerated. Just bring it to room temperature before making the samosas.
  Boil 1and 1/2  pound of boiling potatoes until tender. About  20 to 30 minutes.
   If you plan on making the samosas later, refrigerate the potatoes without peeling them.

Putting The Filling Together:

 Mash the potatoes and set them aside.
 In a skillet or kadhai heat 2 Tbs of vegetable oil.
 When the oil is hot, toss in:
  1 tsp of mustard seeds
  1/2 tsp of cumin seeds

 When the mustard seeds start to pop add in:
2 shallots thinly sliced

2 finely chopped green chilies

 1 tsp of coriander powder
1 tsp of salt
1/2 cup of green peas (fresh or defrosted)

 

Stir the peas around for a bit, cooking them.
 Then add in the mashed potatoes.

Stir the mashed potatoes around and mix them together with the other spices and ingredients for about 4 minutes or so. Then add in:
 1/4 tsp of garam masala
 1 tsp of amchur (dried mango) powder. If you don't have amchur powder, a great substitute for this is lemon juice.

 Check the potato mix for seasoning and get ready to wrap the samosas and bake them.

The Samosa Wrappers:
Here is where the Phyllo dough comes in. First, preheat the oven to 500 degrees.
Defrost the phyllo dough.
Melt 1 stick of butter. This is going to be used to brush the phyllo dough  and make it crisp up nicely.
It important to  keep the dough protected from the air while you're working with it.
Unroll the phyllo dough and place a sheet of it on whatever surface you're working on.
Cover the dough you're not using, with a damp towel.
Brush the sheet of phyllo dough with some melted butter

Lay a second sheet of phyllo dough on top of the first and brush that with melted butter also.
Slice the phyllo dough the long way into 2 and 1/2 inch strips.

Take a sheet of waxed paper and lay it lightly over the strips you are not working with to keep them moist and pliable.
Take 1 tsp of potato filling and place it in the corner of one of the strip s filling the corner.

Now here's the trick! Fold the corner over into a triangle shape. Just like you were folding a flag. You remember that from Scouts right?!

Keep folding just like that right up the strip until you have a puffy little triangle.
 Lay the little triangle onto a greased cookie sheet and brush it with a bit of melted butter.

Each sheet should give you about 3 or 4 little triangles, and  all together the entire recipe should give you perhaps 35 or 40 samosas!

 Bake the samosas for 8 minutes, then turn them and bake them for 10 minutes on the other side.
 When the samosas are nice and light brown and crispy, take them out and serve them.

 They will have a nice light crispy texture. Not as crunchy as fried, but not a gob of half-baked dough either. Phyllo dough is a terrific medium for samosa wrappers if you don't want to get all fried up in there.
  So, there are your baked samosas. They work. All of them were eaten lickty split and even hard core fried fan, Alan said they were great. Eating those baked samosas will enable me to wriggle into my skinny black jeans and prance around the film festival this weekend where I'm hoping to have another brief encounter with Harveys' Gourmet Mini Donuts in a cone. Harvey already sent me a text that he'll be vending his wares at the Film Festival. Take a look at these. How can I  resist?

 Harvey is the Devil!
    I'll be filing all sorts of reports about the doings at the Sonoma International Film Festival this weekend. What's to see and what's to eat. It starts today. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

Baked Not Fried, The Alternative Samosa

  I love samosas. Crunchy, crispy filled with vegetable deliciousness. So when it came to the menu of foods for my birthday party last week, they were at the top of my list. What I don't like about samosas are the oily greasy part. Ok, I take that back. Like every human I love the greasy. That's half the fun. However, the greasy doesn't love me and I don't like what it has the potential of doing to my pants size.
 I also don't like half-baked short cuts to tasty. Most of the time they just don't seem to work out. That's why I decided on a full-baked short cut.  I would make samosas without the deep fat fryer. I would bake them.
There are a lot of recipes out there for baking samosas. Turns out a lot of people enjoy them, but would prefer not getting all the extra oil in their diet. A quick perusal of the internet led me to many variations of baking. Various temperatures.  I factored in all the different ways of going about it and then decided on a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes. It worked.
We had about 18 people over to the house for my party. I settled on a menu of potato and pea samosas, momo made of  shrimp, more momo made of chicken,  a dhokla and assorted chutneys.
  I made my dough and filling a day ahead of time for easy assembly at party time. In two steps you'll be all set to tuck and roll on party day. The following recipe will make enough samosas for 6 people. needless to say I tripled it.
  Samosa Dough
  mix together:
1 cup of flour
1/4 tsp of salt
3 Tbs of vegetable oil
1/3 cup of water
   Mix all of this together. Knead it up and then set it aside covered with a warm damp cloth to rest for about 1 hour.
 If you're going to be using this the next day, cover the bowl with plastic wrap tightly and set it in the fridge. Take it out a good hour before you intend to use it so that it can come to room temperature.
  About the filling. There are a lot of different things one can stuff a samosa with. The most common being potatoes and peas. Even with that combo there are still a lot of variations depending on where the recipe comes from. Without being fancy I'll start off with a basic.
Samosa Stuffing
Boil 3 medium potatoes for about 15 to 20 minutes.
  When they're done, peel them, dice them and set them aside.
  In a large heavy pan heat :
1.) 2 Tbs of oil
   When it's hot toss in the diced potatoes and
2.) 1/2 cup of peas frozen or fresh . If using frozen, thaw them first.
3.) 2 tsp of ground coriander
4.) 1 tsp Kashmiri chili or 1/4 tsp cayenne 1/4 tsp paprika
5.) 1 tsp amchur (dried mango) powder
6.) 1 tsp of turmeric
7.) 1/2 tsp garam masala
  Mix it all up and cook it for about 5 minutes or so.
     As it worked out, I discovered that doubling the stuffing recipe was enough, even if I tripled the dough. I was paranoid about running out of samosa stuffing so I tripled the amount of that. Big mistake. Big. Mistake. I had waaaaay too much. All I needed to do was to double it and I would have been fine. You live, you learn.
So, now to assemble the samosas.
   Roll the dough out in a long cigar shape. Break off pieces of it as though making chapattis.
   Roll each piece into a ball then roll it out with the rolling pin into a round disc, same as a chapatti.

Take the disc and divide it in half. Each rolled out little ball makes two samosas.

Take a tablespoon of filling and place it in the corner of one of the halves.

Fold it over like so, into a little triangle.

Place your folded samosas on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Brush the samosas with a bit of oil.

   Slide the cookie sheet into a preheated 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes. When the samosas start to brown turn them over and brush with a bit of oil and cook  for a bit longer, 5 minutes or so, until they've lightly browned on both sides.

 Take them out and serve them hot, with chutney of your choice.

Or three. I made one hot hot hot, one sweet and one of cooling yogurt with mustard seed.
   The samosas drew a crowd both around the table

And under it, as patsy was hoping to get lucky.

     One of my birthday gifts was an olive tree from McEvoy Ranch. We made sure to get it outdoors before Patsy got any bright ideas.
    Of course among all the other stuff there had to be Princess cake.

I had a great party, I also had a good two days of cleanup, but....let the good times roll! Coming up, a killer momo recipe that can be whipped up in minutes and a look at some great dipping chutneys.