Sambosas
I was lucky enough to have Badria also teach me to cook another of my favorite street foods: the sambosa. Once in a while, especially during maulidi (Islamic festival celebrating the birth of the prophet Muhammad) when both Daren and I left the house at 7:30 a.m. and didn't return until 11 p.m., I would run out the door and down the street to get sambosas from a middle aged woman who sits on the side of the street with a boiling pot of mafuta (oil) and a sambosas piled on fresh newspaper. I'd sometimes watch as she folded the dough to make the small pouch she filled with flavorful minced meat and then grab by the handfuls and drop into the sizzling oil, the smooth dough crinkling and bubbling as the sambosas hit the mafuta. I would hand the sambosa lady— for so I dubbed her— 50 shillings and she'd wrap eight golden crisp sambosas in a sheet of newsprint from an Arabic newspaper (from Dubai of all places) and then hand them to me, the heat from them burning through the thin paper and warming my fingers as I took them. I'd stop by on the way home to grab a couple of ginger or pineapple sodas, knowing the cold glass soda bottles would sweat in my hands and cool me off as I walked the winding streets back home. Sambosas and soda; the perfect end to a long day.
Anyways, here's the recipe. You can just use won ton skins or egg roll skins which are paper-thin sheets of dough made from flour, eggs and salt, and used to make WON TON, EGG ROLLS and similar preparations. WON TON skins can be purchased prepackaged in some supermarkets and in most Chinese markets. The wrappers usually come in both squares and circles and are available in various thicknesses (use the round and thin ones). What's important while making the sambosas is to make sure the oil in your wok is really hot and especially to make sure to fold the egg roll skins tightly so no oil can get to the ingredients inside the sambosa (Badria really stressed this, saying that the flavor of the sambosas would be completely sapped if any oil got inside).
Sambosa Stuffing:
1/2 kilo ground beef
2 large carrots diced finely
4-5 medium onions diced finely
Half a lime
Cinnamon
Salt and pepper to taste (some of the best sambosas have hot chilies diced in them too)
Sauté beef first, adding salt, pepper and cinnamon (this really adds a unique taste). When the beef is almost done add the onions and carrots and squeeze the lime into the beef. Cook a little longer until meat is done and then use mixture to stuff an egg-roll skin. Badria also made a flour and water paste to help seal the edges and keep the oil from getting in when they are being deep fried.
To give you an idea of how to fold the skin, take the thin round skins and cut into quarters like a four piece pie. Then, with the point of the pie wedge pointing toward your chest while it rests in
the palm of your hand, take one of the corners of the rounded edge and turn it up and over toward the middle and then rub the flour water paste on the turned flap. Do the same with the other side, lapping it over the corner you first turned and sealing them together by pressing them with the flour paste you previously put on between them. You should have a diamond shaped pocket with a flap. Stuff, but do not fill all the way, then take the lip of the pocket (not the flap) and tuck it over the stuffing (this is why you didn't want to stuff it all the way). Spread more paste over the skin and fold the flap over letting it stick to the paste to secure it. You should now have a triangular shaped sambosa ready to deep fry. Make sure the three corners you've created are sealed and don’t have holes, you don’t want oil seeping in.
This recipe should be a little easier to make than the mandazi, especially since you can buy the dough pre-packaged. And for you busy folks out there, like I said, soda and sambosas; perfect end to a long day.
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