Chamucas
Mozambique's samosa: smaller and crisper than the Indian original, filled with spiced minced beef and onion, folded into neat triangles and deep-fried.
Overview
Mince browns with onion, garlic, curry powder, ginger and a small chopped chilli; the filling is cooled. Spring-roll pastry strips are folded into triangular pouches around a teaspoon of filling, sealed with a flour-water paste, and deep-fried 170°C until deep gold. Crisp shell, hot savoury inside.
Ingredients
Filling
- 400 g beef mince
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 onion (medium, very finely chopped)
- 3 garlic cloves (crushed)
- 1 thumb fresh ginger (grated)
- 2 teaspoons Curry Powder
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 fresh bird's-eye chilli (very finely chopped)
- 2 tablespoons fresh coriander (chopped)
- ½ lime (juice)
- salt
- pepper
Pastry and sealing
- 20 spring-roll pastry sheets (cut into 8 x 25 cm strips)
- 2 tablespoons plain flour mixed with 3 tablespoons water (paste, for sealing)
- 1 litre vegetable oil for deep frying
Method
Stage 1 - Filling
- Heat the oil in a wide pan over medium-high.
- Brown the mince hard, breaking up clumps. Pour off excess fat.
- Add the onion; cook 5 minutes until softened.
- Stir in garlic, ginger, curry powder, paprika and chilli; cook 1 minute.
- Splash in 100 ml water; simmer 5 minutes until almost dry.
- Stir in coriander, lime juice, salt and pepper. Taste; adjust seasoning.
- Cool completely on a tray.
Stage 2 - Fold
- Take a pastry strip; place a teaspoon of filling on the bottom-right corner.
- Fold the corner up to the left edge to form a triangle.
- Continue folding the triangle up the strip in a zig-zag (flag-fold method) - each fold makes a triangular packet.
- At the end, seal the tail with the flour-water paste.
- Repeat until filling is used up.
Stage 3 - Fry
- Heat the oil to 170°C in a deep pan.
- Fry in batches of 6, 3-4 minutes total, turning, until deep gold and crisp.
- Drain on kitchen paper.
Stage 4 - Serve
- Eat hot or warm with piri-piri sauce or a chilli dip.
Notes
- Folding technique: YouTube "samosa fold" - the flag/zig-zag method is universal across South Asia, East Africa and the Lusophone world. After two or three you'll have it.
- Cool filling is essential: Warm filling steams the pastry from the inside and ruins the seal.
- Sealing paste: A small amount of flour-water at every tucked corner; without it the parcels open in the fryer and shed filling.
Storage
- Refrigerate 2 days; re-crisp at 180°C for 6 minutes.
- Freeze unfried up to 2 months. Fry from frozen, adding 1-2 minutes.
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