Samosa Egg Roll
Ingredients
- 2 3/4 lbs peeled potatoes
- 1 tablespoon canola oil
- 2 Tbs butter
- 1/8 teaspoon hing (asafetida)
- 1 tablespoon amchur powder or sub lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
- 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
- 3 tablespoons grated ginger
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 tablespoons canned minced green chilis if using fresh use less to taste
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 1 tablespoon garam masala
- 1 tablespoon Kashmiri chili powder
- 2 teaspoon ground coriander
- salt
- 1 18- oz Twin Dragon Asian Egg Roll Wrappers
Instructions
- Boil potatoes under fork tender. Drain and crumble.
- Sauté mustard seeds, cumin seeds and hing in butter and oil until fragrant (around a minute). Add ginger, garlic and chilis and sauté another few minutes until the ginger is fragrant. Add peas and the rest of the spices. Sauté about 5 minutes until peas are cooked. Carefully stir in the potatoes so as not to mash them. Let cool until safe to handle, about 5-10 minutes.
- Heat about 2 inches of canola oil in a large, shallow pan to 350. Place a small amount of filling (about 1/4 cup) in the center of the egg roll in sort of a log shape on each wrapper.
- Place the wrapper so it like a diamond in front of you then fold each side towards the middle, brushing each edge with egg, and roll towards the top. Repeat until the filling is gone.
- Fry until golden, flipping occasionally, drain on paper towel-lined plates.
I really can’t resist entering a recipe contest if one of the qualifying ingredients is already one of my favorites. Twin Dragon wrappers (egg roll or dumpling–check out these dumplings we made a while back) by JSL Foods not only are high quality but are found in a lot of supermarkets (like Albertsons, Shaw’s, Von’s, Stater Bros, Fred Meyer, QFC, Safeway, Giant Stores, Shop N Shop, Winco, and Price Chopper). I buy them at Giant or Safeway where they are normally found in the refrigerated produce section or near tofu if that isn’t also in the refrigerated produce section. Anyway! I am not the best at carefully wrapping anything–gifts, egg rolls, dumplings, cabbage–and they always hold together.
This contest asked me to make some fusion egg rolls. Egg rolls, the cabbage heavy staple of Chinese-American food menus are already pretty “fusion” to begin with. It’s thought that they originated in New York City (sometimes you’ll see “New York-style” on menus to mean the bumpy flour-based wrapper variety to distinguish it from the also cylindrical but not the same spring roll) with vaguely Chinese flavors. How do I make this even more fusion? My first attempt was a delicious lamb variety (I’ll post that recipe too) but I wasn’t sure if it was fusion enough. I started to think about what other appetizers I like to get from restaurants. It’s been more than 320 days since we’ve had any real take-out or been to a restaurant so there are a lot of things to chose from! One of the cuisines we’ve been missing the most is Indian or what is very popular in restaurants here– Indo-Chinese food so I thought why not combine egg rolls with the classic samosa? They have very different fillings and shapes but they are both best when freshly fried, crispy, and piping hot.
We have made a fair amount of Indian food in the past so we had all the ingredients (except fresh green chiles) that are normally in a samosa. They are very easy to find in any South Asian grocery store or even on Amazon and some larger supermarkets. It was very easy to put together the filling, roll them up and fry them yet they seem very impressive! I can’t wait to serve these at my next holiday party or game night. They are super flavorful and filling and really just fun to eat.
