Dough with something always makes for a good comfort food. In collaboration with Gen Eat, Play Clove plus with the little party we had at home last week, I thought a theme surrounding appetizers with dough would be perfect for this month’s Monthly Mystery Munchies!

Oh! There are so many, many things one can do with dough and technically, it should not be difficult to come up with one, right?! But you know what! I actually had a rather hard time focusing on one recipe and was going back and forth with a few “something” appetizers with dough to serve on Squirt’s birthday party.

After several debates that went only in my head, I decided on an appetizer that’s very typical of my Singaporean roots. It’s something that I grew up with; something that I missed a lot and something that I’d like to share with the world if you don’t already know this.

It’s the Potato Curry Puffs, otherwise known as “Epok-Epok Kentang”. Now, I have no idea what “epok-epok” actually means…but it is made of home-made dough filled with curried potatoes, a little bit of meat and a wedge of boiled egg if you like, and then deep-fried. Its savory, makes for a good snack and often served as sides when you visit someone’s home. It is also eaten for breakfast.

My mom used to make a lot of these when I was younger, making and selling it for extra income. The filling is easy to make, but there’s some back-breaking work involved to assemble each epok-epok piece by piece. So without further ado, here’s the recipe:

Potato Curry Puffs (Epok-Epok Kentang)

2015-07-13 14:22:48

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Ingredients

A) For the Filling

1. 5-6 pieces potatoes, peeled and cubed
2. 2 tbsp curry powder
3. 5-8 pieces curry leaves
4. 200g-300g minced chicken or beef
5. 2-3 pieces small shollots, peeled and finely chopped
6. Water
7. Boiled eggs cut into wedges (optional)
8. Salt to taste

B) For the Dough

1. 500g plain flour, sifted
2. 2 tbsp butter
3. 300 ml hot water
4. Salt to taste

Directions

A) For the Filling

1. Fry meat without oil in a frying pan. Remove from the pan
2. Fry the shallots, also without oil, till they are translucent. Remove from pan
3. Roast the curry powder for a minute or two on the frying pan and add in curry leaves.
4. Mix in the potatoes with the curry powder and fry for a few minutes. Then add in water, just enough to cover the potatoes and cook the potatoes till they are soft
5. Then add in meat, shallots and salt to taste. Mix well together. Make sure the potatoes are soft (but not too soft and mushy) before turning off the heat

B) For the Dough

1. Rub the butter into the flour and make sure that they are mixed well
2. Add in salt and stir well
3. Add in hot water, bit by bit and knead well till the dough is no longer sticky.
4. Let it rest for an hour

C) To make the curry puffs

1. Roll the dough flat. Cut the dough with a circular-shaped cutter for the outer crust
2. With about ½ to 1 tbsp of filling, depending on how big the circular crust it, place the fillings and a wedge of boiled egg into the crust
3. Crimp the edges of the dough to cover the filling – you can use a fork to shape the edges or flatten and flip it using your fingers
4. Repeat till all the dough and fillings are used up.
5. Deep fry them! You can also choose to keep them in the freezer and fry them up whenever you want.

Notes

1. Caution: Don’t stack them up without using anything in between or they’ll get stuck together and you cannot separate them. I use wax paper and sprinkle flour over them before putting the remaining into the freezer.

Grubbs n Critters https://grubbsncritters.com/

For now, bon appetite!

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1. Roll the dough flat. Cut the dough with a circular-shaped cutter for the outer crust

2. With about  ½ to 1 tbsp of filling, depending on how big the circular crust it, place the fillings and a wedge of boiled egg into the crust

3. Crimp the edges of the dough to cover the filling  – you can use a fork to shape the edges or flatten and flip it using your fingers

4. Repeat till all the dough and fillings are used up.

5. Deep fry them! You can also choose to keep them in the freezer and fry them up whenever you want. Caution: Don’t stack them up without using anything in between or they’ll get stuck together and you cannot separate them.  I use wax paper and sprinkle flour over them before putting the remaining into the freezer.

I didn’t stop at just the curry puffs for appetizers and attempted something cheesy, something lasagna-ish using wonton skins. It’s a little bit of a cheat as I don’t make the dough myself, but they are too good not to share and I’ll be sharing that for next week.

There is barely enough time for a breather since I got back into the grind at work about 2 weeks ago, and now I’m off again to yet another exotic location for another work-related conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

I was only informed about this trip just last week and since then, I have been on a mad, mad scramble to get things organised while trying to sort shit out on the work front as I slaved away into the night for several continuous days. It hasn’t been a particularly fun week.

On top of that, we had a birthday party to attend and stuff to prepare for the weekend in lieu of Squirt’s smallish birthday celebration in our home. I wasn’t home for his birthday last year when he turned 2 due to other pressing challenges and commitment and it would not be right if I miss his birthday again this year.  Fortunately, this trip is scheduled after his birthday, although I really had to go on the double to get things sorted out.

Me-time? I had none. I have been an energizer bunny shuttling between crazy work demands, birthday parties, kids’ weekends activities and our usual weekend routine amongst other things. Now that the parties are over, I dread having to get on my ass to pack for this trip. I hate, hate packing. I can’t stand for it. I’d rather be cooking. Or blogging!

It’s great that I would get some alone time when I travel for business, but in the scheme of things,  I’d rather be home and spend time with my kids. As it is, I don’t see very much of them, and because I have been travelling quite a bit this year, almost on a monthly basis and on some months back, two trips in a single month, I would rather not go.

My boss, who was initially supposed to come along, couldn’t get out of another meeting at the same time this conference is happening – a separate meeting which we both had to be in. And because of this last minute notice to travel out, we had to divide and conquer. His visa approval is not so simple given the timeline, and very fortunately for me, I don’t require any visa to travel out. One has gotta love having a Singaporean passport!

I’m travelling solo on a 14+ hour journey to the other side of the globe. Looooooong flight! I’ll only get to Lisbon after midnight and then there’s the trip to the hotel to navigate. That means, I would have to try very hard not to sleep whilst in the air to sync-up my body clock when I get there, so there’ll be plenty of time for me to wind down: read, watch movies and perhaps, get some inspiration to write up a few posts.

And then, there would be some serious, brain-wrecking hard work being cooped-up in the hotel’s conference room while being induced on a food coma for 2 straight days. The agenda’s pretty tight and heavy. Icing on the cake: Unlike other corporate conferences I have been to, with this one, I don’t know a single person in that room! Great.

Hopefully though, I’ll get to see a little bit of Lisbon. I hear that the Portuguese Kitchen has got some awesome food, and I think I am more excited about that!

Till then. Wish me luck. See you in Lisbon!