Samosas!

I've become addicted to reading a couple different blogs, and a couple of them are about food. Sometimes I get ideas from blogs, or sometimes I just have an ingredient or idea and Google it and get a bunch of different recipe ideas. My two favorite food blogs are:

- Fed Up with School Lunch: A blog written by an anonymous teacher who is eating the school meal every day for a year to raise awareness for how the nutrition lacks in them. She posts pics and comments about the lunches (which look way worse than our school lunches, but ours aren't very nutritious either) and has a lot of guest bloggers. It's a fascinating topic. As I'm on a healthier kick now and really shunning artificial ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, it's amazing to see what "nutrition" is to the institution that serves kids. How something like tater tots or corn chips satisfies their requirement of a veggie for the day. Yuck!

- BentoLunch Adventures (What's for Lunch at Our House): A blog I discovered through the Fed Up blog. A mom who makes INSANELY ARTISTIC lunches for her kids. You have to see it to believe it. And it's healthy! She also posts a lot of recipes. Which brings me to...

SAMOSAS!

These Indian dumplings are yummy.. and with me being off of work this week, I was feeling rather housewife-ish. So I decided to take the recipe, tailor it to my tastes, and make samosas for dinner.

Ingredients:
2 Yukon Gold baking potatoes
Peas (frozen)
Garlic (2 cloves or so)
Onions (I don't like them, so just used about a quarter of one for flavor)
Olive Oil
Paneer (Indian Cheese)
Curry Powder
Fillo Dough

You can really put ANYTHING you want inside it. Add or subtract what you want!

Here's how I did it:
1. Peel potatoes, cut into small cubes. Boil for about 20 minutes- until soft but not falling apart. Drain.

2. Chop onions and garlic. Sautee in olive oil for about 5 minutes (until they are getting soft).

3. Add about 2-3 tablespoons of curry powder to mixture. Stir to coat.
4. Pour cooked potatoes and peas into the mixture. Stir well to coat with curry powder. Add a little more if needed. (Note, I didn't thaw the peas much. They cooked enough on the stovetop then in the oven.) Cook for 5-10 minutes to absorb flavor. Set to the side.

5. Spread fillo dough out on the counter so the longest side is at the top and bottom. Fold it over into thirds, then turn to "hotdog" position (longest side at top and bottom again).
6. Spoon some of the mixture into the bottom left corner. I added 2 cubes of paneer (which was frozen) at this point. Then fold the corner up so it's a triangle.

Note that my folded fillo is sitting on top of non folded sheets here.

7. Fold down to a triangle again. You will get basically 3 folds and then have a little left over on the end. At this point, get a little water and bush it on the remaining strip of dough. Fold over and stick to the triangle. This seals it. It took me a couple tries to get the folding part. Check out this website for better pictures and instructions.
8. Put on cookie sheet and bake at 375 for about 6-8 minutes, flip over and bake on the other side for the same or until golden brown.
9. EAT! I served it with an Indian masala sauce for dipping!

Experiments in Cooking

In cooking new things, one of the first foods I experimented with was zucchini. I read another blog post about all of the different things you can do with it plus had some excellently prepared zukes at Casa Schwartz and was inspired to try some myself. It all started with the zucchini boat. I brushed zucchini with some olive oil and topped it with Italian seasonings and feta cheese then baked it for 20-30 minutes.

Since then, I've used zucchini in a variety of ways. Cooking it in soup, zucchini flatbread pizza, zucchini chips, and tonight, zucchini fries. To make the fries, cut them up, sprinkle seasonings over them, and then bake them at a high temp (500 degrees is what I did). I used a combination of garlic salt, onion powder, cumin, chili powder and oregano. This is how they came out:

They were a little overcooked - and I have learned after two times of having sticky zucchini to the very NOT non-stick pan- that I need to use a different pan or some cooking spray first. They were pretty tasty nonetheless.

I also made another dish tonight that I tried before, but this one was better: curried chick pea casserole. I'm trying to eat more protein since I don't get any from meat, so beans are one way. The casserole has chick peas, curry powder, onions, garlic and some tomato paste. Top with some feta cheese and bake.


I served it with naan and over jasmine rice. Delicious! This is what our plates looked like.