Fancy a little snack that goes really well with your afternoon tea? Samosas are perfect for this!
They are distinctly triangular in shape. The crust is thin and flaky filled with a savoury filling of curried potatoes and/or minced meat like beef, chicken or lamb. Of course, they can be made without using any meat too.
Samosas come in many variations given their cultural diffusion in origins that stem from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, East and North Africa influence to name a few.
The fillings and the thickness of the crust differ. I prefer mine crispy thin; using the skins of spring rolls give this effect. And, if there is one thing you should know about a piece of samosa: A samosa is not a samosa if it isn’t tetrahedral!
It’s a delightful snack and here’s how you can make your own home-made samosas with just a few main ingredients.
Samosa
2016-03-15 02:53:35
Yields 25
A delightful snack that's crispy on the outside and savoury on the inside
Heat up some olive oil. When it is hot enough saute onions and garlic till translucent
Add in curry powder and fry it together with the onions and garlic for a few seconds. Then mix in the chicken stock cube
Add in the potatoes and paprika powder. Mix well. Fry for about 5 minutes
Add some water such that it covers up the potatoes.
Add in the chicken and bay leaf. Stir well
Cover it up for about 10 minutes and let it simmer on low
Then take off the cover and let it simmer till the potatoes are soft and the liquid is dry. Season with salt
Let it cool and set aside
Fill 'em up!
Peel off the spring roll, skin by skin
Take about 1 tbsp of the filling and drop in on each skin
Fold the sides up such that it forms a downward pointing arrow
Fold over
Take each sides of the leftover skin and fold over to form a triangle
Brush the beaten egg on the underside to stick the skin together
Heat up enough oil for deep frying
Fry till golden brown.
Serve. Hot!
Notes
You can always substitute the meat with lamb or beef, or if you prefer not to, add peas. For the skin, I prefer to double layer each samosa so they don't explode while frying.
Best eaten when hot!
Grubbs n Critters https://grubbsncritters.com/
Step-by-step instructions on getting that triangular shape using a square piece of a spring roll skin:
1. Peel skin by skin
2. Drop about 1 tablespoon of filling on the skin
3.Fold the sides up such that it forms a downward pointing arrow
4.Flip it over, leaving 2 triangular edges on each side
Ritu, over at But I Smile Anyway created a Where In The World…? post asking her readers where in the world they are from. She’s got some interesting international family connections spread across the world and she’d love to know which other international connections they have too!
And I thought hey! This would make one interesting post to do! Here we go, Ritu! Let’s hope the pingback works or I’ll have to be spamming your comment box with my link. :p
Credit: Ritu, But I Smile Anyway…
I was born and bred in Singapore, a tiny little country that’s just a dot on the map.
I spent 2/3rd of my life there and moved to Thailand 11 years ago.
I’m a mutt: Half Javanese, a quarter Japanese and quarter Portuguese.
My father is Javanese and spent his entire life in Singapore. His late father was pure-bred Javanese who hailed from the deep of Indonesia. His late mother was a Singaporean of Malay-Indonesian descent.
My mother is half-Japanese, half Portuguese who was born in Malaysia. She went to school in Singapore then migrated to Singapore and became a Singaporean after she married my dad.
Here’s an interesting snippet of my late maternal grandfather: He was born in Japan and was apparently a child soldier who had escaped the Japanese army during the Japanese Occupation in World War 2 and got adopted in Malaysia. So it is likely that we have got some distant relatives still unknown to us living in Japan!
My late maternal grandmother as I understood, had embraced the Buginese ethnic culture from South Sulawesi with her inherent Portuguese lineage and lived in Malaysia. (Don’t ask me why. Even I am confused!)
I have a small family. There are only 4 of us and most, if not all of our relatives are mostly in Singapore and Malaysia. Then some are probably still spread across Indonesia.
My parents have a distant relative whose daughter lives in Australia.
Then I married a Dutchman. Both of his parents hail from the Netherlands.
My husband’s uncle lives in England and is married to a lady from Scotland.
That’s pretty much where the tentacles are spread. In terms of lineage, our kids are pretty much a breed of authentic “muttified” mishmash packaged as “Dutch” based on their father’s origins.
Who knows in a few more years from now, we’ll be living somewhere else after our big move to the Netherlands! And for good measure, I am anticipating that our kids would probably be spreading their wings to somewhere else in the world too!
So, my dear readers, where are you all from and can you trace your international family connections? I’d love to know, too!
Make sure you pop to Ritu to read her very interesting rundown of connections across the world. And if you like, write about it, ping it back, use her image if you want to and share along Ritu’s Where in the World post.
Let’s make this world smaller by sharing. Ritu’s a genius. This is fun!
It has been more than 5 and a half weeks since I took my Dutch Exam. The one very important exams for which if I passed, I do not need to ever take any more exams when we get our asses to live in the almighty Netherlands long-term, with my own family. Legally.
The one exam which my Dutch teacher keeps asking about every other day if I have gotten the results. The one very exam for which I was so sure I was going to fail real bad that whenever my Dutch teacher asked me if they have reverted with the results, I would tell him that perhaps I had flunked out so bad that they don’t even want to bother telling me about it.
It was that one damning exam which had caused me a lot of unnecessary stress. And after that 3-hour session at the Embassy, I have never in my life felt so sure that I had screwed it all up pretty bad. A pass would be a miracle.
Now the wait is over.
A bloody damn miracle was what this is!
And it got me thinking: Either they have got it all wrong or I may have just scraped through by the skin of my teeth! Because goddammit! That really was a very tough exam.
If you were to ask me if I remember the questions, I’m telling you I don’t. Some questions and depictions of scenarios were downright ridiculous yet they are all vague to me now; only random words and pictures floated in my head yet none I could grasp well to remember clearly. But! I remember how I fumbled and how I thought my head would burst especially at the harder questions.
It feels surreal to know that I had passed. Apparently I’m getting a Diploma for that (although I just don’t know when I’ll be getting it) .Wooohooo!
I’m curious about my scores though and, I wonder if they would release the individual score of each of the exam I have taken in my diploma:
Knowledge of the Dutch Society (Kennis van de Nederlandse Samenleving – KNS)
Speaking (Spreekvaardigheid -SP) – and mind you, this is not just basic sentences like “I live in Bangkok”. But rather grammatically correct sentences, structure and usage of words in a few sentences. This was my nightmare!
Electronic Practical Exam for Work (Elektronisch Praktijkexamen -EPE: Werk or OGO)
Then again, whatever the scores are, I have already fuckin’ pass the damn exam.
Bloody well, then.
Can I now speak Dutch? Hell no! But I’ guess I’ll get there in time. At least, I could read and understand some of it. Reading the kids’ Dutch books helps too and having this Diploma will ascertain that I can now be fully and legally integrated into the Dutch society. (I’m saying that with lots of sarcasm).
Bloody well, then.
This journey started in late May 2014, and over a dark period of my life if I may add. It has not been an easy ride for me both mentally, emotionally. It was draining. I can’t believe that was almost 2 years ago now.
2 years of spending my Saturdays with a 3-hour lesson week on week; although not entirely continuous as there were long stretches of weeks or months when we weren’t having any class at all as I was either travelling or busy with work. So technically, the entire learning of basic reading, writing and conversational Dutch took about 15 months; give or take 3 months.
But that was not the main reason it took me so long to get here. The one and the only reason this took THAT long was because Silver Bullet had to spend close to a year being bounced from place to place to just get a date for me to take both the Inburgering and Naturalisation Exam. No, I’m not kidding.
The process was atrocious. He could not get any straight answers from anyone at any point in time and he spent countless of hours on the phone (international calls, too!) and emails only to be sent back in circles with no firm directions. The ding-donging took forever. And that would have to be a separate post altogether.
I pretty much left it to Silver Bullet to sort it all out and I have been pretty blaisé about the whole thing. I used the waiting time to my advantage. My job was to learn Dutch; enough Dutch for me to pass the exam so that my kids would not end up without a mother just because she is a foreigner.
Then somehow, he had a breakthrough only late last year. That was when the real process started and I still had to wait for a long time before they were able to give me a date for the exam to be taken. Pain in the arse.The waiting is nothing but a waste of bandwidth.
But life is funny that way.
In these 2 years, my Dutch Teacher has become a rather close family friend and we have worked together on the professional front. The kids enjoy his company (Spud wanted to marry him but changed her mind when she realised that he would die before her when we told her that he’s too old for her) and our couch has since become his best friend. He can be counted on to finish all the food that I cooked and I love that. He’s like a little brother to me.
But above all, he has been a very good teacher. He’s got all the smarts and has been incredibly patient with me. His knowledge of the Dutch language is beyond excellent and none of my questions have so far gone unanswered. And I asked a lot, a lot of questions; only because the Dutch language has time and again confused the fuck out of me.
If anything, I owe all this new acquired knowledge of the Dutch language to him. I’ll be happy to connect him to those who are interested in learning Dutch. He does Skype sessions for long-distance learning and I cannot vouch enough for him that he is one hell of an incredible teacher. Pop me a message if you know of anyone who needs a Dutch teacher.
Come to think of it, Silver Bullet finding him in Bangkok was like a needle in a haystack. He had been shooting in the dark and it was kind of random that he found him. This quote comes to mind:
Source: Google Image
Indeed, our paths seemed to have crossed for a reason. It has been one hell of a ride. And now the wait is finally over.
