Sunday, April 10, 2016

Wild Greens Baked Samosas Recipe- Gluten Free, Vegan


The other day, my friend Renee sent me this link to gluten free samosas, made with rice paper wraps, and at first, I'll admit, I wasn't particularly interested in this Indian three cornered stuffed dish- not sure why though, since I love Indian food. But then I was trying to decide what I should do with a bunch of wild greens that I had in my fridge, and then thought- why not use this technique for samosas, but instead of filling it with potatoes and peas, fill it with wild greens?
I was a drop skeptical that it would work at first, because I haven't had the best luck with cooking rice paper wraps before (they tend to get soggy pretty quickly), but I figured it was worth a try.
My son, Lee, who was helping me make them didn't particularly enjoy the filling when I made it- he thought it was too sour, and I almost added some baking soda to the dish to neutralize the acidity in it, but then once the samosas were made and the filling was eaten together with the rice paper wraps? Well, lets just say that my kids were fighting over them, who would get the first ones ready, who could have more. Needless to say, they were disappointed when there were no more left, and I'll certainly be making these again.

I made these with dock, but you can make it with any greens you like for the filling. If you're using a more bitter type of leaf, blanch in boiling water first before using. Feel free to add a drop of lemon juice to your greens if you want to recreate what I did, or leave out if you'd prefer to have something less tart.
Alternatively, feel free to replace this with whatever filling you like, something with Indian style spicing.

Wild Greens Samosas Recipe- Gluten Free, Vegan

Ingredients:
1 tablespoons oil (I used coconut)
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
3 small tomatoes
1 lb dock leaves or any other greens, wild or not.
1-2 teaspoon garam masala (I used homemade garam masala)
1/2-1 teaspoon salt (to taste)
Rice paper wraps
Water
Oil

Instructions:
1. Chop up onion and garlic and saute in oil until browning.

2. Add chopped greens and chopped tomatoes, and cook, stirring occasionally, until fully cooked.

3. Add garam masala and salt to taste.



4. Strain the veggie mixture through a mesh strainer, since you don't want your filling to be too wet and drippy.

5. Take a rice paper wrap and dip it in water for about 2 seconds, then lay it on a plate or a cutting board. You can use either small or large rice paper wraps- I used small but large would probably be better.

6. Take your strained veggie mixture, and, imagining that your rice paper is a pizza divided into six slices, put the mixture into the space of one of those six slices.


7. Fold the rice paper in half over the filling, so that the filling is in the right most third of the rice paper.


8. Carefully fold the rice paper with the filling into thirds- first over once, then again, so that you have a triangle that is closed on two sides and open on the third.


9. Pick up your samosa so that your filling is at the bottom and the open end is at the top, then push it in so it isn't close to the edge. If it is too full, remove some of the filling, then fold over the open side so that all three sides are closed. It won't stay closed so well but that is OK.



10. Dip your samosa into some oil, trying to not soak it in the oil but just get a light coating. If you put in too much oil, it'll still work but will take longer to cook. Alernatively, if you have a pastry brush, brushing it on all sides with oil is probably best.

11. Place your samosa seam side down on a lined baking tray, leaving a little space between each one. 

12. Repeat with the rest of your filling until the tray is filled. I got about 20 small rice paper wraps on one tray, using about 2/3 of my filling, so I assume about 30 small rice paper wraps would be enough for the entire lot. 


13. Bake at 350 until fully crisp, turning them over every 5 minutes until they are nicely browned and crispy. If your samosas are less oily, they'll take about 15 minutes and 2 flips before they are ready, but if you used too much oil they will first appear to be a very soggy mess and you'll think that they flopped, but if you keep on cooking them, flipping them every 5 minutes, they'll loose the extra oil and will crisp up.


You probably will notice some of the filling dripping out of the ends- the folded over part doesn't always stay closed so nicely, but that's fine, they'll still be great.

14. Serve them immediately, since if they sit around they will get soggy. You can serve them with a chutney or raita type dipping sauce, but these were really tasty on their own, no need for any dipping sauce.

Enjoy!

Ever have samosas? How about gluten free ones? What were they filled with? Does this look like a recipe you'd try? What would you use to fill it?

2 comments:

  1. Trying this...grocery store has collards now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've had samosas filled with seasoned diced potato.

    ReplyDelete

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