We've had a few posts about the joy of just bashing something at the moment. In a constructive, nurtuing way, obvs. But still, bashing. I've had my share of that. But in a nice congruence of feeling and scheduling, I found myself making quite a fiddly recipe yesterday just when I really needed something to take my time at. It had been a weirdly busy, quite scheduled work day, and I was very glad for not-screens activity with purpose. It's also a useful end of week recipe, veganish, and surprisingly forgiving and full of shortcuts despite the fiddling.
Spiced pea and filo parcels (fake samosas)
100g frozen peas, thawed
1 large potato
1 tsp mustard seed
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Half an inch of fresh ginger, grated
1 tbsps spice mix
1/2 a lemon (juice only)
8 sheets of filo pastry
80g butter, melted
Nigella seeds
Oil
Salt and pepper
This is the official recipe. My quantities were "the end of this packet of peas I want out of the freezer" (about 150g I reckon), therefore "two middling potatoes" but no change in the onion and spice, and that universally recognised measure "one supermarket packet" of premade filo. Which turned out to be 9 sheets and about right although everything got a bit overstuffed. Oh and black sesame seeds instead of nigella because a) I don't have any nigella and b) weirdly I seem to be a bit allergic to it. They're really just for decoration anyway, although I don't on reflection recommend using either if you have recently had kitchen mice as a few black specks will fall onto your work surface/floor and you will have Flashbacks of Unpleasantness.
The spice mix is either curry powder (if I have it, I can't find it), or garam masala (I do have it but not much left, must add it to one of my thousands of lists) or baharat (which there are instructions for elsewhere in the book, but which I do have a premixed Honey & Co jar of which had *just* fallen out of a cupboard at me, so that's what I used).
So ingredients are pretty simple. It's the tools that aren't, or rather are more numerous than usual for a quick dinner for me. Not one for when you don't want to wash up. You will need: a saucepan, a frying pan, sharp knife, stirring implement, grater, colander, masher, pastry brush and a clean kitchen surface, which for me means getting down the marble slab that lives behind my hob, as I don't have any work surface that's big enough for pastry. It has featured in many Confined Kitchen photos, and not been used all lockdown. (It wasn't this so much as the pastry brush that gave me a "what, really? that toooooo?" feeling. Broken by a pastry brush.) Nothing actually takes too long, this isn't a Project Meal. But it does need that bit more Work.
1. Boil the potato. Recipe says do this whole then peel, but I diced it for speed, and it was fine. (I also thawed the peas by dunking them in with the cooking potato, which seems obvious as a solution so I'm not sure why the recipe is so insistent they be thawed.) Drain and leave to cool a bit.
2. Meanwhile, pop the mustard seeds in oil into a frying pan and cook till they pop. Finely slice and add the onion to that pan, sweating it down for about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger and spice mix, and cook out for 2 mins.
3. Combine the two pansful and crush everything together with a masher, adding the lemon juice and seasoning. It doesn't need to aim for smooth, but you want everything well combined. (It doesn't matter if you do this while everything is hot, as long as you're not scalding yourself, but for the next bit you want it cool enough you can comfortably handle it.)
4. Oven on to Gas 6, 200deg, 180 fan. Get a baking tray or two ready to hand. Put adjacent to your flat clean pastry-working surface. Get out your filo. Unroll it gently (some of mine came apart a bit, sigh, but it mostly stayed viable).
5. Lay out one filo sheet on your surface, brush with butter, scatter with seeds. Lay a second sheet over it. Slice it into thirds, parallel with the long side - you want three long strips, not rectangles.
6. Take a tablespoonful of pea/potato/onion mix and put it at one end of one strip of filo. Fold the end over into a triangular shape. Keep following the logic of the strip along, keeping that triangular shape as it wraps all round the filling. This is *improbably easy* to do, though horrible to describe. Mine weren't super neat, but perfectly viable. I don't think filo is ever that neat.
7. Brush with the remaining butter (or don't, I ran out and the world didn't end), into oven for 15-20 mins till crisp and golden. Eat with any chutney or salad to hand, or as a starter or something. They are very low maintenance once you've got this far. Can readily reheat or even eat cold, though the crispyness ebbs.
Spiced pea and filo parcels (fake samosas)
100g frozen peas, thawed
1 large potato
1 tsp mustard seed
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Half an inch of fresh ginger, grated
1 tbsps spice mix
1/2 a lemon (juice only)
8 sheets of filo pastry
80g butter, melted
Nigella seeds
Oil
Salt and pepper
This is the official recipe. My quantities were "the end of this packet of peas I want out of the freezer" (about 150g I reckon), therefore "two middling potatoes" but no change in the onion and spice, and that universally recognised measure "one supermarket packet" of premade filo. Which turned out to be 9 sheets and about right although everything got a bit overstuffed. Oh and black sesame seeds instead of nigella because a) I don't have any nigella and b) weirdly I seem to be a bit allergic to it. They're really just for decoration anyway, although I don't on reflection recommend using either if you have recently had kitchen mice as a few black specks will fall onto your work surface/floor and you will have Flashbacks of Unpleasantness.
The spice mix is either curry powder (if I have it, I can't find it), or garam masala (I do have it but not much left, must add it to one of my thousands of lists) or baharat (which there are instructions for elsewhere in the book, but which I do have a premixed Honey & Co jar of which had *just* fallen out of a cupboard at me, so that's what I used).
So ingredients are pretty simple. It's the tools that aren't, or rather are more numerous than usual for a quick dinner for me. Not one for when you don't want to wash up. You will need: a saucepan, a frying pan, sharp knife, stirring implement, grater, colander, masher, pastry brush and a clean kitchen surface, which for me means getting down the marble slab that lives behind my hob, as I don't have any work surface that's big enough for pastry. It has featured in many Confined Kitchen photos, and not been used all lockdown. (It wasn't this so much as the pastry brush that gave me a "what, really? that toooooo?" feeling. Broken by a pastry brush.) Nothing actually takes too long, this isn't a Project Meal. But it does need that bit more Work.
 |
| The marble slab is absolutely waiting for its moment |
1. Boil the potato. Recipe says do this whole then peel, but I diced it for speed, and it was fine. (I also thawed the peas by dunking them in with the cooking potato, which seems obvious as a solution so I'm not sure why the recipe is so insistent they be thawed.) Drain and leave to cool a bit.
2. Meanwhile, pop the mustard seeds in oil into a frying pan and cook till they pop. Finely slice and add the onion to that pan, sweating it down for about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger and spice mix, and cook out for 2 mins.
3. Combine the two pansful and crush everything together with a masher, adding the lemon juice and seasoning. It doesn't need to aim for smooth, but you want everything well combined. (It doesn't matter if you do this while everything is hot, as long as you're not scalding yourself, but for the next bit you want it cool enough you can comfortably handle it.)
4. Oven on to Gas 6, 200deg, 180 fan. Get a baking tray or two ready to hand. Put adjacent to your flat clean pastry-working surface. Get out your filo. Unroll it gently (some of mine came apart a bit, sigh, but it mostly stayed viable).
 |
| Slab in use! |
5. Lay out one filo sheet on your surface, brush with butter, scatter with seeds. Lay a second sheet over it. Slice it into thirds, parallel with the long side - you want three long strips, not rectangles.
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| Nothing artistic about placing here |
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| With a couple of folds, working in either direction. Surprisingly hard to mess up. |
6. Take a tablespoonful of pea/potato/onion mix and put it at one end of one strip of filo. Fold the end over into a triangular shape. Keep following the logic of the strip along, keeping that triangular shape as it wraps all round the filling. This is *improbably easy* to do, though horrible to describe. Mine weren't super neat, but perfectly viable. I don't think filo is ever that neat.
 |
| Productivity! (This is only half of them) |
7. Brush with the remaining butter (or don't, I ran out and the world didn't end), into oven for 15-20 mins till crisp and golden. Eat with any chutney or salad to hand, or as a starter or something. They are very low maintenance once you've got this far. Can readily reheat or even eat cold, though the crispyness ebbs.
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| Crispy goodness! |
Ooh, I was wondering about trying this one, and they do look good.
ReplyDeleteYes, so long as you've got filo (and peas obvs) it's a really good one. I think I used garam last time, so the spice mix made a bit of a difference. But it works well either way, and the twiddling is rather fun too.
DeleteI randomly bought filo last week and have been wondering what on earth to do with it. Confined Kitchen delivers again.
ReplyDeleteIs excellent (and could take a bit of tweaking with other veg I reckon, according to what's around).
Delete