Every December one of my very good girlfriends hosts a ladies only Christmas potluck, we drink wine, play board games and eat soooooo much food. Unintentionally the theme of last year’s party ended up being too much cheese and bacon, so this year the host decided to handle most of the cooking. Yet, since I can’t give up a chance to try a new recipe I conviced her to let me bring samosas!

I’ve never been handy at baking but I found a recipe with homemade dough and decided to give it a whirl, also I wasn’t really feeling sweet potato samosas so I found a different recipe for the filling. The recipe for the dough and the mint-yogurt dipping sauce is from a blog called Happy Yolks and the recipe for the filling is from a site called Food and the Blog. My favourite part about the end result is that the samosas are baked not deep fried! Also I doubled the recipe to make enough to feed 10 hungry ladies.

Baked Vegetable Samosas

Filling

• 2 tbsp olive/sunflower oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tsp minced ginger
• 1 red/green chilli finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 /2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• a pinch of red chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 200 gr, peeled & diced potato
• 100 gr frozen peas

Dough

• 1½ cups flour
• 8 tsps water or buttermilk
• 4 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
• Warm water for sealing edges

Mint-Yogurt Sauce

• 3½ cups tightly packed cilantro leaves, finely chopped (I only used mint)
• 1 cup tightly packed mint leaves, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
• ¾ cup greek yogurt
• salt to taste

Preheat oven to 450 F. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat and add the onions. Cook for 4-5 minutes until softened then add the garlic, ginger and fresh chilli and cook for another 2 minutes.

Add in the diced potatoes, peas, all the spices, salt, pepper and sugar. Stir well to coat the potatoes in the spices, lower the heat slightly and cook until the potatoes are soft. Leave to cool.

While the filling is cooling (I actually let the filling cool overnight and assembled the samosas the next day), divide dough into 200 golf-ball sized rounds. On a lightly floured work surface using a rolling pin, roll each dough ball into a 6″ round. Fold the flattened dough in half and fill with 1 tbsp of cooled filling. Moisten one edge of the dough and roll both edges together, the end result should look kind of like a crescent. Place finished samosas on a greased pan and bake Samosas for 15 minutes on one side, turn and bake for another 5. Remove when both sides are lightly browned.

For the chutney: Place cilantro, mint, lemon juice, and yogurt in a blender. Purée until smooth.

Enjoy!