[Sca-cooks] Persian AND Indian samosa! Non-mystery keema this time!

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I stopped by the Indian grocery hoping for more frozen keema. Alas, there
was none. But they'd just gotten a new meat delivery, so I picked up a bit
more than 4 lbs of fresh boneless lamb chunks (4.3 lb total before any
trimming) and ran it through my meat grinder. I'm not sure of the fat
content, although it was less than the mystery keema since I didn't need to
drain any extra fat, although one of the two pans did need some of the
additional non-fatty liquid removed.

I much prefer the texture of fresh-ground lamb to
ground-packed-frozen-thawed lamb, I have to say. Also, the mystery keema
was almost definitely lamb.

Before I looked at recipes, I cooked the keema in two roughly equal batches
with a bit of vegetable oil (probably a couple of T each) and added 1 1/2 c
of frozen onion paste to each batch. The onion paste: a lot of onions,
diced up, cooked in ghee to a medium golden brown, reduced to a paste with
my trusty hand blender (with a little water added to facilitate blending),
and frozen in 1/2 cup amounts.

So we've got

2lbs keema
1 1/2 c onion paste

I looked at the Ain i Akbari and did math and said "wow, that's a lot of
salt"

Ain i Akbari quantities, which Cariadoc so kindly added to my previous
e-mail on the topic:

Qutab, which the people of Hind call sanbusa: This is made in several ways.
10 s. meat; 4 s. fine flour; 2 s. ghee; 1 s. onions; 1/4 s. fresh ginger;
1/2 s. salt; 2 d. pepper and coriander seed; cardamom, cumin seeds, cloves,
1 d. of each, 1/4 s. of sumaq. This can be cooked in twenty different ways,
and gives four full dishes.

(*Ain i Akbari* Volume I, page. 63)

Units used in the Ain I Akbari are: 1 ser =
2 lb 2 oz, 1 dam = oz.

So I was reading the spices from various period samosa/sanbusak recipes
aloud to the Consort, when I got to Plain Samosa from Bavarchi:

Take white red meat, as much as desired, dice thoroughly, and fry in oil.
Add plenty of diced onions and add sumac juice, or if desired, its powder.
Add warm spices, cumin, and coriander. Take thin excellent bread, fold
over, and a cut four-finger-width length off both its ends, cut again from
the middle to the same size [shapes] and fold triangularly [to form a
cone], secure its edges with dough and stuff it with necessary amount of
the filling (qeyme), close its (the round cone) edge up over the filling
(qeyme) and secure its edge with dough and fry in oil. If desired, eat it
with sumac which would be good.

And I said "hey, that's almost the same as the Ain i Akbari!"

So, using the Bavarchi and some trial and error, the final spicing ended up
being

2 lb keema browned in 3 T vegetable oil
1 1/2 c onion paste

1 T and 2 t dried ginger
1 T and 2 t ground sumac
1 t ground cloves
1 t ground black pepper
3/4 t cinnamon, which was not intentional
1 1/2 t ground coriander
1 1/2 t ground cumin
1 1/2 t ground cardamom

It is delicious. I used a combination of gyoza wrappers (I call them
gyozamosa) and empanada wrappers and fried them in peanut oil (because my
frying oil is currently peanut oil). I did not add salt, because the
Bavarchi recipe does not explicitly call for it and then it slipped my mind.

The empanada wrappers are available frozen at your local Mexican/Latinx
grocery, they come in three sizes. I used the Goya brand. I got the large
ones, and if you cut them in half the resulting samosas are about the same
size as standard restaurant samosas and the dough is not unlike restaurant
samosa pastry. About 2 T of filling, and crimp them really well, or they
try and come apart in the frying. Following suggestions from the
Ni'matnama, I served them with lime juice. I heartily recommend the lime
juice.

I used the gyoza wrappers because I'd just discovered them hiding in the
fridge, and decided I should use the darn things up. The resultant
gyozamosa are edible, but the wrappers are too light and chewy at least for
my taste. If you're doing Indian samosa for a feast and need to save time,
I'd go with the empanada wrappers as the best compromise.

Margaret