Shingara Samosa

Prepare the filling: Combine the roasted cumin seeds and the red chillies, grind to a fine powder using a mixer or a mortar and pestle. From this mixture, take only 1 tbsp for subsequent use in the recipe, store the rest.

Boil the potatoes and cauliflower in 2 cups of water for 5 minutes. Drain the water, and keep aside the vegetables.

In a kadhai, heat 2 tbsp oil to smoking, fry the boiled potatoes and cauliflower together with salt to taste (1 tsp or so) for 5 minutes on medium heat until they turn soft, stirring constantly to avoid charring.

Turn off the heat, add the fried mixture from step 1 above to the vegetables, mix well and keep aside. If you like hot shingaras, you may add in 1-2 green chillies finely chopped into the mixture at this stage. Now prepare the flour shells: In a bowl, take the flour and add to it the oil and salt. Knead thoroughly for 5-7 minutes. The more you knead, the better the shingara) Now take 1/4 cup water at hand, and to the oil-kneaded flour add water by the teaspoon and continue kneading for 3-5 minutes more until the flour is moist, but a tight ball. Avoid adding too much water together, and keep it tight, if the dough becomes loose, add more flour/oil mix to compensate.

Pinch off five equal sized balls from the kneaded dough, roll between your palms to get a circular shape, and cover with a moist cloth.

Using a rolling pin (or a bottle!) on a smooth hard surface, flatten out the dough balls. Take a pinch of dry flour on the rolling surface, place the ball, and using the pin, roll into a roughly oval shape. Bisect each oval shaped dough cake across the width (not length!) to get two triangular pieces (Fig 1) . Remove and place aside. You will have 10 pieces from the dough prepared above.

Take a single piece of the dough and fold it into a cone, cementing the folds together with a few drops of water each time you fold (Fig 2 and 3) .

Into the cone, stuff filling to 3/4 volume. Seal the top of the cone by closing the top flap onto the body using some water as glue, using your fingers, "staple" the top flap tightly to the body (Fig 4) .

Finally, fry the shingaras: In a kadhai, heat the oil to smoking, turn down the flame to low. Place the shingara cones into the oil, and fry on low heat 3-5 minutes until golden brown. Using a spatula, turn over the cone and fry for another 3-5 minutes. Turn the heat up to medium, quickly fry each side for a minute. Remove the shingaras from the oil, drain and keep aside.