Hubby and I look forward to our weekend excursions in Santa Cruz as if they were vacations. Having grown up “over the hill” (as the Santa Cruz locals call it), we have the wonderful advantage of having a place to stay for the whole weekend unlike many others who can only enjoy the cooler weather, idyllic beaches and laid-back lifestyle for a few hours before needing to head back home.

These days, most of our weekends are spent at my dad’s house, about fifteen minutes south of downtown Santa Cruz in the tiny town of Aptos. Usually if we are not in Aptos by 7 P.M. on Friday night, my dad calls and asks, “Where are you?”  My mom and step dad live just 10 minutes further south in the foggy beach town of La Selva and we often all gather at their house for family get-togethers and parties, or at my dad’s for a more casual hangout.

Our trips over the hill are like mini vacations, where we get to escape the responsibilities of work and home, the hustle and heat of the city and spend time with all my family.  Sometimes we’ll have Friday Family Night where everyone gathers to catch up. Usually, we just head straight to dad’s house and begin watching all the TV shows we had recorded. Hubby heads off to watch CNN and Bill Maher while I catch up on all my favorite Candice Olson design shows and watch The Barefoot Contessa ask “how easy is that?” about a hundred times.  Hubby and I don’t have TV at home, we never have and we probably never will, but Dad has two humongous TVs and we record all our favorite shows and movies and spend much of the weekend watching more than enough television to make up for not having our own.

To prepare for our weekend getaways, I usually spend Friday afternoons cooking up something easily transportable and low maintenance,  a big batch of daal or vegetable rice – enough to last through Sunday night.  This weekend however, my weekend mentality (or shall I say weakened mentality) kicked in early on Friday and I just didn’t feel like cooking.  I wasn’t tired and I already had everything we needed to cook up something delectable, but for some reason I just wasn’t into it.

I have learned from experience that cooking when I do not feel like it guarantees a cooking failure.  If my heart is not in a dish, you can taste it.  It will be good, but it will somehow taste lifeless.  This makes me feel certain that the one key ingredient for great cooking is the chef’s own enjoyment and love for the creating of that dish. Having realized this, I decided that instead of cooking something and having to eat something bland and tasteless all weekend, we would buy some of our favorite prepared foods from the Indian store that we always used to love.  There actually was a time – about a year – when most of our food came from the pre-made and frozen foods section of our local Indian grocery store.

When I first started teaching few years ago, my schedule was so full with figuring out what to teach the next day, learning music and driving in two hour traffic to evening rehearsals in San Francisco that I don’t remember cooking at all that whole year.  Sometimes Hubby cooked, but a lot of our food was from the frozen prepared foods section.  The Indian store sells little TV dinners and frozen flat breads of all flavors.  The ease of it all seems so tempting and convenient.  This Friday, remembering how much we enjoyed eating those foods back in my super busy days, I had Hubby pick up all our favorites: TV dinners of Malai Kofta, Paneer Hariyali and packages of frozen onion parathas.  It felt like I was getting a great deal! Restaurant-style food for only a few bucks.  I was excited and looking forward to a weekend of great meals without any effort!

But when we sat down to eat our dinner that night, none of it tasted like we remembered.  The memory of a lip-smacking and spicy meal that was ready in mere minutes was replaced by a reality of the strong taste of chemicals and an after effect of residual oiliness.  After having our last bite and cleaning up the dishes Hubby and I turned to each other with frowns on our faces and said in unison, “I feel gross”.

What had happened? Was our food near the expiration date? Did the company change their recipe?  We remembered this food being so good!  But this!? This was just terrible.

We realized, the company or recipe hadn’t changed at all, we were the ones who were different.  Back when this highly processed food was all we ate, our bodies were used to it and we loved every bite.  Now, I get to cook fresh foods every day and these store-bought convenience meals just couldn’t stand up to the quality of fresh home cooked meals made with love.  Needless to say, after a full weekend of “food” soaked in preservatives, we felt pretty sickly and  learned our lesson.  From now on, when Friday approaches and I’m already feeling the laziness of the weekend set in, I’ll need to remember that investing a little time and heart into making something great to enjoy over the next two and a half days, feeling fresh and well nourished is well worth the extra effort.

Upon coming back home, the last thing I wanted was more pre-made food for our dinner, even though I had saved a box of my once all-time favorite Malai Kofta.  So I rummaged through the fridge to see what we had.  There was just the bare fixings of potatoes, onions and frozen peas. I also had some leftover puff pastry from my potato pillows recipe and was looking for an opportunity to use it up.

I remembered a charming recipe from the wonderful blog Veggie Belly which I had saved in my “Recipes To Try” folder.  It was a recipe for samosa pops, darling little bites of spicy potato pastry on lollipop sticks.  I loved the idea and decided to make my own version of her cute finger food twist on traditional samosas. The original recipe on  the blog calls for a stuffing made from sweet potatoes, a great twist that gives it a sweeter dessert-like flavor.  Since I didn’t have any sweet potatoes, I decided to go with my favorite samosa recipe filling and just use puff pastry instead of the traditional dough.

 

Samosa Bites Recipe

Time: 45 minutes

Servings:  makes 21

Ingredients:

2 frozen puff pastry sheets (available in the frozen desserts section at the grocery store)

4 medium potatoes

1/2 cup frozen or fresh peas

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

6 curry leaves, chopped (optional, found at the Indian grocery store)

2 green chilies (optional)

1 medium onion

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 clove garlic, 1/2 inch peeled ginger – pureed (or 1 tbs. garlic and ginger paste)

2 teaspoons coriander powder

1 teaspoon garam masala (found at Indian store or Whole Foods)

1 teaspoon red chili powder (or to taste)

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

10-15 stalks of cilantro or about 4 tablespoons chopped

1 egg

1 teaspoon water

1 lime

Directions

To prepare the stuffing:

Preheat the oven to 400-degrees F and move the rack into the center of the oven.

Boil the potatoes and peas until soft, 20 minutes for a regular pot, 2-3 whistles for a pressure cooker (10 minutes). Once they are boiled, drain the peas and potatoes into a colander and let them cool to room temperature. Once they are cool to the touch separate out the potatoes then peel and mash.

While the potatoes are boiling, heat 2 tablespoons of your favorite cooking oil in a pan.  Once the oil starts to ripple on the surface from the heat add the cumin seeds and let them splutter and turn light brown, about 15 seconds.  If using the curry leaves, add the chopped curry leaves. They will immediately react with the hot oil, making it pop and splutter so quickly add the green chilies (optional), diced onion and salt and cook for 6-8 minutes the onion becomes light brown. Adding the salt at this point helps the onions cook faster.

Add the pureed garlic and ginger or garlic and ginger paste and let cook for 2-3 minutes.

Add the coriander powder, garam masala, red chili powder and turmeric to the pan.  Stir and cook for 2 minutes.

Peel and mash the potatoes while the spices are cooking.

Add  about a 1/4 of a bunch of chopped cilantro (removing the stems first) and stirred it in

Add the peas and mashed potatoes to the pan and stir till all the spices are mixed in well.  Mix well then transfer to a container to let the mixture cool to room temperature. To speed the cooling process, place the mixture uncovered in the refrigerator.  You can also place it in the freezer but not for too long, you don’t want the mixture to freeze!

To prepare the puff pastry:

Prepared puff pastry comes in sheets that are folded in three, like a letter.  The folded sheets need to be thawed so they can be laid flat and cut.  Take out the sheets of puff pastry, wrap  them separately in a paper towel, a kitchen towel or plastic wrap and  thaw for 20-30 minutes until you can unfold the sheets and lay flat. If the puff pastry is sticking to the work surface, sprinkle lightly with all purpose flour if necessary.

To see how to assemble the mini samosas, use the same method as the potato pillows.

Use one sheet for the bottom layer and one sheet for the top layer cut each sheet down the seems and then across to make 3 rows of 6 pieces, making an effort to cut the top layers a bit larger than the bottom layers.  One full sheet of pieces will be used to spoon the stuffing onto and the other will be used as the top covering.

Spoon a 1/2 teaspoon of the stuffing onto the each square from one sheet.  Try to leave a bit of room around the sides so there is enough room for sealing the puffs. You may need to use less than a 1/2 teaspoon of the stuffing.

Cover the mixture with a top layer piece.  The cuts of puff pastry used for the top layer should be a little bigger than the cuts used for the bottom layer because the pastry cannot be stretched, so cutting it larger gives it room to lay over the mixture and still touch the sides of the bottom layer of pastry.  Seal all the sides using the tongs of a fork.

For a beautiful golden brown coloring, whisk a whole egg with 1 teaspoon of water and brush this mixture, known as “egg wash”, in a thin layer over the tops of each bite-sized puff.

place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 15 minutes or until the pastry puffs up and turns golden brown.

Each mini samosa is only 2 or 3 bites so they make the perfect appetizers.  Golden brown and delicious, they look beautiful and will be on my next dinner party menu.  Whenever I host a dinner party, I’m always just finishing up the cooking when guests arrive so they tend to gather around our kitchen island and watch me cook.  These mini samosas will be the perfect teaser to the meal and will give them something to nibble on while I work.

Samosa Bites Recipe

Time: 45 minutes

Servings:  makes 21

 

Ingredients:

2 frozen puff pastry sheets (available in the frozen desserts section at the grocery store)

4 medium potatoes

1/2 cup frozen or fresh peas

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

6 curry leaves, chopped (optional, found at the Indian grocery store)

2 green chilies (optional)

1 medium onion

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 clove garlic, 1/2 inch peeled ginger – pureed (or use 1 tablespoon of garlic and ginger paste)

2 teaspoons coriander powder

1 teaspoon garam masala (found at Indian store or Whole Foods)

1 teaspoon red chili powder (or to taste)

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

10-15 stalks of cilantro or about 4 tablespoons chopped

1 egg

2 teaspoons milk

1 lime

 

Directions

To prepare the stuffing:

• Preheat the oven to 400-degrees F and move the rack into the center of the oven.
• Boil the potatoes and peas until soft, 20 minutes for a regular pot, 2-3 whistles for a pressure cooker (10 minutes). Once they are boiled, drain the peas and potatoes into a colander and let them cool to room temperature. Once they are cool to the touch separate out the potatoes then peel and mash.
• While the potatoes are boiling, heat 2 tablespoons of your favorite cooking oil in a pan.  Once the oil starts to ripple on the surface from the heat add the cumin seeds and let them splutter and turn light brown, about 15 seconds.  If using the curry leaves, add the chopped curry leaves. They will immediately react with the hot oil, making it pop and splutter so quickly add the green chilies (optional), diced onion and salt and cook for 6-8 minutes the onion becomes light brown. Adding the salt at this point helps the onions cook faster.
• Add the pureed garlic and ginger (or garlic and ginger paste) and let cook for 2-3 minutes.
• Add the peas and mashed potatoes to the pan and stir till all the spices are mixed in well.
• Add the coriander powder, garam masala, red chili powder and turmeric to the pan.  Stir and cook for 2 minutes.
• Add the chopped cilantro.  Mix well then transfer to a container to let the mixture cool to room temperature. To speed the cooling process, place the mixture uncovered in the refrigerator.  You can also place it in the freezer but not for too long, you don’t want the mixture to freeze!

–

To prepare the puff pastry:

• Prepared puff pastry comes in sheets that are folded in three, like a letter.  The folded sheets need to be thawed so they can be laid flat and cut.  Take out the sheets of puff pastry, wrap  them separately in a paper towel, a kitchen towel or plastic wrap and  thaw for 20-30 minutes until you can unfold the sheets and lay flat. If the puff pastry is sticking to the work surface, sprinkle lightly with all purpose flour if necessary.
• Use one sheet for the bottom layer and one sheet for the top layer cut each sheet down the seems and then across to make 3 rows of 6 pieces, making an effort to cut the top layers a bit larger than the bottom layers.  One full sheet of pieces will be used to spoon the stuffing onto and the other will be used as the top covering.
• Spoon a 1/2 teaspoon of the stuffing onto the each square from one sheet.  Try to leave a bit of room around the sides so there is enough room for sealing the puffs. You may need to use less than a 1/2 teaspoon of the stuffing.
• Cover the mixture with a top layer piece.  The the cuts of puff pastry used for the top layer should be a little bigger than the cuts used for the bottom layer because the pastry cannot be stretched, so cutting it larger gives it room to lay over the mixture and still touch the sides of the bottom layer of pastry.  Seal all the sides using the tongs of a fork.
• For a beautiful golden brown coloring, whisk a whole egg with 1 teaspoon of water and brush this mixture, known as “egg wash”, in a thin layer over the tops of each bite-sized puff.
• place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 15 minutes or until the pastry puffs up and turns golden brown.