A taste of India

While we were planning the week’s meals, my wife found this recipe she wanted to try. It was for Indian Samosa Casserole. I said sure, why not?

Now, the first thing you need to understand is that I am not now, nor will I ever be a vegetarian. Not that I have anything against vegetarians, mind you. The more of them there are, the more meat there is for me. That is something I am always going to approve of.

But my wife and I both love Indian food, which does tend to be largely vegetarian. And, of course, having Indian food that we don’t have to go anywhere to get it is an appealing idea. Particularly when it can be made ahead, frozen and thrown into the oven during a weeknight.

Toys was painting the new bathroom Sunday, and since there is not enough room in there to help her, I helped by putting together the casserole.

It was fairly easy to do, waiting for the potatoes to cook took longer than pretty much everything else. I think my wife finished painting the trim about the time I finished.

The crust was a little difficult. We don’t have whole wheat pastry flour in the house. Seven different kinds of flour and not the one we needed. Nuts. So, I used half whole wheat and half cake flour instead.

I also added one tablespoon too much of water. On the plus side, it was still short of the minimum amount of water the recipe called for.

Oh, and I forgot the sugar called for in the filling. Not that we really missed it much.

All in all, it went smoothly. Once assembled, I covered it in plastic wrap and stuck it in the freezer for later on in the week.

The heating directions from frozen were spot on and we had dinner on the table in about an hour and a half.

It was quite good. Although, there are a couple things I might want to tweak if we ever did this again. I would use a bottom crust as well. It would be tidier and just better all around with more crust. Toys thought about adding lentils or chickpeas to the filling to give it a little more bulk. Cooked chicken would probably do the same thing and make it seem more like a complete meal.

We had thought to serve this with an IPA, an India Pale Ale. What we had in the odd beer stash in the basement was an Extra Pale Ale from a brewery in Utah. It worked. The extreme amount of hops went perfectly with the Indian blend of seasonings.

You can find the recipe here. Try it and let us know what you think.

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