The Making of Ramadan’s Samboosa

Lishui It’s time again to bring out the samboosa dough, for my Ramadan iftar table is never complete without a plate of hot bubbling baked samboosa (samoosa) in the very centre! With fourteen days to go until the start of the Holy Month of Ramadan where muslims fast all day long and break their fast at sunset. A favourite Ramadan preparation activity of mine is wrapping the Samboosa’s myself at home using my own filling mixes.

The only thing I don’t make at home is the samboosa dough. I always buy the dough by the kilo from the Indian Samboosa shop in Qadsiya Co-Op. In my humble opinion it is the best in Kuwait. The sheets always come fresh, bubbling hot, and the doughy smell is so maddeningly good you cannot help but eat a few uncooked sheets of samboosa. Especially the ones with the creases. Yummy!

The samboosa sheets are best used on the day of purchase while still hot and pliable. If you keep them in the fridge for a day or two they will be OK as long as you get them out a few hours before wrapping time and let them thaw to room temperature. Sometimes, the sheets are so thing you can go a bit cross eyed trying to pry them off each other without breaking them but overall the process is very smooth.

What to do with the sheets? Well, you turn the dough into triangles as I will show you and fill them with whatever you want. Traditionally it’s either filled with minted feta cheese, Kraft’s canned cheddar cheese, or a vegetarian mix of peas potatoes and carrots. The world is your oyster though, I’ve filled them with everything you can think of!

This year the traditional canned Kraft cheddar cheese got a makeover! No longer do you have to pry open the can with a can opener, I found the new cheese container int he refrigerator section of the co-op so I’m guessing it won’t be as long lived as the old canned cheese. I used one can and chopped it up into small cubes – it goes great with red grapes and pecans for a quick snack btw-.

I also use a carton of Al-Maraei’s low fat low sodium white feta cheese and mix it up with a spoonful of dry mint. This is my second favourite samboosa mix ever.

I also use Kraft cheese as a samboosa filling. The Kraft Cheese and Kiri Cheese samboosa’s are my husband’s favourites. My absolute favourite, however, is the herbed Halloumi and Akawi cheese filling. I make mine using low fat halloumi, akawi cheese, black seeds, chopped fresh parsley, and chopped fresh mint.

Putting together the ingredients necessary to make the little baked triangular delights couldn’t be faster or easier. Purchase a kilo -or more- of fresh Samboosa dough, bring out whatever cheese you have in the fridge, and a little bowl of white flour mixed with warm water to use as a glue, and wrap away to your heart’s content.

How to wrap a samosa? Here is how…

These pictures might be more helpful, I made them last year (post).

If the filling is a soft cheese one, like the Kiri or the feta, it is easier to wrap.

Once wrapped, you can place them on trays, tupperware boxes, or big plastic bags. If I’m going to use them immediately I’d place them on a baking tray but for freezing I place them in big plastic tupperware boxes and freeze them to use throughout the holy month of Ramadan.

Samboosa’s are usually deep fried in oil but I can’t eat them that way anymore. I place them on a baking tray or a piece of aluminium foil and bake them in a 180 C over for about 8 to 10 minutes. Some people brush them with olive oil before baking but I don’t think that’s necessary. The moment you sit on the iftar table, after a long day of fasting, and break a bubbling hot samboosa, the cheese filling all fragrant oozing everywhere, it’s heavenly!

Other fillings you can use for your samboosa’s are pizza mix (tomato sauce, mozzarella, oregano, and olives), Mexican Fajita mix (salsa, refried beans, chopped jalapeños, and Monterey jack cheese), chocolate and harda spread, Nutella, Chocolate flavoured Philadelphia cheese, and this year I’m contemplating using the crunchy lotus biscuit spread as a filling for the second phase of Samboosa wrapping, perhaps with blueberries. If it works I will post about it

So, how do you like your Samboosa during Ramadan and what’s your favourite samboosa filling?

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