Curry Puffs

Oyster-looking-Curry Puffs

Man do I love eating curry puffs!! In my opinion, this is the ultimate finger snacks when done right. Almost every culture cuisine has something similar. Indians have samosa, mexicans have empanadas, and italians have calzones (poor comparison). For years, the only thing that comes close to the flavor of the Curry Puff is the Indian samosa since these two items are essentially the same thing but named differently.

I have been wanting to make curry puffs for a long time. Instead of making my own dough, I have decided to use store bought puff pastry. As for the fillings, I decided to follow the recipe on www.Rasamalaysia.com and, as usual, with my own slight variations. Please visit this site for the original recipe  http://rasamalaysia.com/recipe-curry-puff/2/

The original recipe and what most traditional curry puff have and probably the only difference between a samosa and a curry puff is this -- there is meat in curry puff, normally chicken. But mine is meatless since I didn't have any chicken readily available when I made this.

Main Ingredients for the Fillings

3 medium size potatoes (boiled, peeled and diced)
1 red onion (finely diced)
frozen green peas

Fillings Seasonings


1/2 tsp curry powder

1 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt

Pastry

Puff pastry from any grocery store. Follow the manufacturing instructions when using a puff pastry.

Instructions

A) Fillings

1. Heat some oil in a pan.
2. Saute the onions until it turns golden brown.
3. Add the spice powders and fry gently. (Before adding the spice powder, make sure you have sufficient oil in the pan as the dry powder absorbs oil very quickly and might burn).
4.  Add the diced potatoes and green peas into the pan and fry gently. Season with salt and pepper.
Some notes:
a) It is okay to add additional seasoning such as curry powder, chilli powder, salt and pepper until you get something you like.
b) It is also okay to keep adding oil into the pan when things seems a little dry.
c) In the end, your potatoes might look more like a mash potato and this is okay too.
5. Let the potato filling cool down to room temperature (you must do this to ensure that the puff pastry works later).

I used an inverted Pyrex dish and run a sharp knife around it to cut out a circular dough

B) Pastry

1. Heat the oven to 400F for at least 15-20 minutes.
2. Thaw the puff pastry at room temperature according to the manufacturer's instructions.
3. Gently flour the table surface
4. Roll the puff pastry until it becomes thinner.
5. I ran a sharp knife around the edges of an upside-down bowl to cut out a round piece of dough.
6. Put some of the fillings on the cut-out dough and close the dough.
7. Use a fork to pinch the edges of the dough to crimp the edges.
8. Bake the curry puff according to the puff pastry's manufacturing instructions or, in my case in a purely empirical method, until the puff pastry is deemed sufficiently puff and the color turned golden brown.
9. Serve and enjoy!

Curry Puffs face off!!  

We tried out two different crimping method. The easier one is the one to left which was done using a fork

I have never work with puff pastry before until today. I love the smell of the butter coming out from the oven. That's when you know something is going right! However, my pastry did not puff up the way I want. Maybe I was expecting something to look like this, which was an unrealistic expectation:

Even though my pastry did not puff up, I was still very satisfied with this project. The curry flavored-potato balanced the sweetness of the butter aroma.


There are a few things that I learned from this experience and I will list them down with no order of importance:
a) Timing is everything. You want to work very fast with the puff pastry before the butter in the dough melts
b) Temperature is everything too. The oven needs to be very hot and ready to go. The fillings needs to be cooled and the working surface for the puff pastry should preferably be cold.
c) If you are using a puff pastry, do not add too much fillings because your curry puff will look like an oyster when the puff pastry puff up.