When life hands you samosa filling and salmon . . .

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. I think it can also be argued that having leftovers is also the mother of invention.

After our book club lunch, I was left with quite a bit of the samosa filling, as well as some of the salmon we'd made. Yes, I could just make more samosas or use put the filling into puff pastry sheets to make Bengali-style patties, but I wanted to do something else with it. And so I did.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with tuna cakes or salmon croquettes. Well it's probably not a surprise to learn that we have our versions of those too. Except we call them tuna or salmon kababs. I'm sure to many, the word kabab makes you picture a skewer with meat and veggies on it. That is definitely a type of kabab. But the type of kabab I'm talking about today is patty-shaped and made from a mixture of cooked fish, spiced potatoes, and some binding ingredients. These are usually fried, and I've shallow fried and baked them with equally good results.

After this past Thanksgiving, my mom took leftover turkey, our mashed potatoes, stuffing, and some Indian spices and resurrected the leftovers as kababs. It's a very versatile and forgiving dish, and this was what I had in mind as I looked at the leftover samosa filling and salmon.

This isn't a proper recipe, so there aren't any measurements. Think of this as a template for you to use up leftover potatoes and meat.

I took the salmon fillets and flaked them with a fork. Next, I added some of the samosa/potato filling. With my hands I crumbled the two together in a bowl. I added more potatoes as needed. Then I added some extra spices to punch up the flavor a bit. I added an egg and made sure to incorporate it thoroughly into the mix. Finally, some breadcrumbs to help bind everything.



And then for the fun part. Using both hands, I'd scoop up a bit of the mixture and roll it into a ball. Then I flattened the ball into a patty shape and smoothed the edges so that the kabab wouldn't come apart when it cooked. After that, all that was left was to cook the kababs.

So in a reasonably minimal amount of time I was able to utilize my leftovers and create an entirely new dish. Not a bad trick! Also consider the fact that Mr. Spice was ehh about the salmon in the first place, now that it's been doctored up there shouldn't be any complaints.

May Book Club Lunch

Now if you've read earlier posts, you know that some friends and I have our own book club and try to meet each month. We started last May, so this month's meeting marked our 1-year anniversary! While we haven't met every month due to life getting in the way sometimes, we have met most months. I do have to admit that as time has gone on, the amount of time spent discussing the book has gone down and the amount of time devoted to the food at our meetings has increased!

Since we started our inaugural meeting with a book by a Bengali author, we felt it appropriate to come full circle and center this meeting around another South Asian author. We ended up choosing "The Hindi Bindi Club," by Monica Pradhan. Not only did the whimsical title catch our attention, but the book also contained recipes! How fun to read the book and then make some of the recipes out of it!

So that is exactly what we did. After reading the book (ahem, 2 of the 3 of us, that is), we made a list of all the recipes in the book and picked 3 to prepare. Since we pretty much followed the recipes as written, I'm going to be a tease and not post the recipes here. Plus the book is good and you should read it! We ended up making Preity's Goan Shrimp Curry, Saroj's Famous Samosas, and Uma's Shorshe Salmon Maach. What are all these dishes?




Preity's Goan Shrimp Curry is pretty much what it sounds like, a shrimp curry with a South Indian touch by way of tamarind, curry leaves and coconut milk. Now I'm normally not a fan of curries made with coconut milk, but with all the different flavors going on, the coconut taste was in the background. We made this one without any tweaking.

Uma's Shorshe Salmon Maach was a Bengali-inspired salmon dish. It used paanchphoran, which as I have mentioned before is best described as a Bengali 5-spice mixture. The salmon fillets were coated with mustard oil, another Bengali staple. The paanchphoran was supposed to be ground into a paste with water and dried red chilis, but my mini chopper doesn't seem to like spices, so they remained whole. The fish was supposed to be grilled, but since we needed the stove for the shrimp curry, rice, and making the potato filling we baked it instead. I have to say of all the dishes we made, this one didn't turn out as I'd expected. That was probably because of the spices not being ground into a paste.



I've talked about samosas before on here! So I don't need to explain Saroj's Famous Samosas in great detail. We did tweak the ingredients a bit because we felt it needed a little extra "something." And because we were a bit short on time we didn't make the samosa shell from scratch. I'd wanted to use refrigerated pie crust since it's ready to go, but we ended up with crescent roll dough instead. No matter, I just rolled the dough into circles using a glass as my makeshift rolling pin, cut each circle into halves and we made the samosas out of those, baking them instead of frying them. These turned out great and we scarfed down most of the batch.

Next month's book club pick has to do with zombies, so it'll be interesting to see how we plan our food around that!

BSI entry: Sweet Strawberry Samosas

When Laura at Hey What's For Dinner Mom announced this week's BSI ingredient was strawberries, my mind immediately went to work on ideas. I had so many I wanted to try, but knew I needed to pick something that was fast and reasonably reliable.

I immediately thought of a sweet samosa. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of eating a samosa, I'm sorry for you. Imagine a rich pastry dough stuffed with savory fillings such as potatoes and peas or spiced ground beef, which is then fried to a golden goodness. The varieties are endless. Think of the Indian equivalent of an empanada and you'll get the idea.

Anyway, when I make samosas, I don't make the dough from scratch because I'm too lazy. I've experimented with eggroll wrappers, phyllo dough, refrigerated pie crust, and puff pastry sheets. I also don't like deep frying, so I end up baking my samosas. Not 100% authentic, but it definitely hits the spot. Of all these methods, I would have to say the refrigerated pie crust produces the best result, but I noticed after happily scarfing these down that they tend to contain lard, which I try to avoid. Puff pastry doesn't produce the traditional look, but it's easy for me to use. Plus there are some Bengali snacks called "patties" that use puff pastry, so whatever. See my October Book Club Tea post for examples of "patties" and how from-scratch samosas look. My friend Lopa has perfected the dough for the ones from scratch, although she makes the Bengali version of samosas, called shingaras. Yes, I know I'm being confusing, sorry!

So back to my BSI entry. I have been toying with the idea of making sweet samosas for a while now. I figured using strawberries as the filling was the perfect opportunity to experiment. I was initially going to use phyllo dough but it's so fiddly, so I went to my reliable puff pastry dough. I thought of adding some chocolate to the filling because what goes better with puff pastry than chocolate? Think of pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants) and you'll see what I mean. The results were good. Very good. I may have to take the leftovers to work tomorrow so that we don't scarf them all tonight.



Sweet Strawberry Samosas
1 sheet puff pastry
1.5 cups strawberries, rinsed, hulled, and sliced
2 tsp. honey
2 tsp. sugar, separated
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 tsp. orange extract

Thaw puff pastry for 40 minutes.

While puff pastry is thawing, take prepared strawberries, and add honey, 1 tsp. sugar, and orange extract. Mix well, and let sit for approximately 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Line baking sheet with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray.

After puff pastry is thawed, cut into 9 squares. Take strawberries and drain any remaining liquid. Add chocolate chips and combine.

In each square, place approximately 1 tsp. of strawberry mixture in center. Fold up corners diagonally to form a triangle. Press edges shut. You may need to adjust filling amount as necessary so samosas are not over-stuffed.

Once all samosas are made, lay on cookie sheet. Spray more cooking spray or spray butter on tops and sprinkle remaining tsp. of sugar over samosas.

Bake approximately 20 minutes or until pastry is golden.

Let cool and drizzle chocolate syrup over samosas if desired.



Now as you can see, I definitely over-stuffed my samosas, since they burst open at the sides while baking. However, I still think they looked good this way, since now I don't have to cut them open to show the filling! :)