Guest post (with a bonus tasty recipe!) written by author Nisha Sharma
Nisha Sharma is the critically acclaimed author of My So-Called Bollywood Life, a Kirkus starred reviewed YA romance, and NPR best book of 2018, and the follow up novel, Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance. She is also the author of The Singh Family Trilogy with Avon Books and the forthcoming rom-com series If Shakespeare was an Auntie. Her writing has been praised by Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue, Buzzfeed, Hypable, and more. Nisha lives in Pennsylvania with her Alaskan husband, her cat Lizzie Bennett, and her dog Nancey Drew. You can find her online at nisha-sharma.com or on Twitter and Instagram at @nishawrites.
Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance comes out on July 13th, and is available for pre-order online and in bookstores near you.
I don’t think I’ve ever attended a South Asian party where samosas weren’t a part of the menu. It’s a feature in every single one of my books, and a recipe that my main character in Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance (July 13th) learns how to make for the first time.
In my novel, Radha is a former classical Indian dancer who is attempting to fill the void that dance has left behind. She tries to connect with her father, a chef, by exploring her food culture and begins cooking recipes out of her grandfather’s old cookbook. In the process, she learns about herself, about her family, and that sometimes, there is no exact recipe for happiness.
As part of the writing process, I had to make every recipe referenced in the story. The problem was that I didn’t really know a lot about Indian cooking. I enjoyed Indian food, but living in central New Jersey, I was incredibly spoiled because we have so many great Indian restaurants at every corner. More importantly, my mother lived close enough that I was able to bug her to cook for me whenever I wanted. That meant that Radha’s journey into food culture, was also my own.
One night a week for six months, I would FaceTime my mother and she’d walk me through everything from the most basic recipes like making atta, or the base dough for rotis, to the most complicated like her famous chole, or Punjabi style stewed chickpeas. As I learned and wrote my way through my book, I began creating deviations of my family favorites that were uniquely my own.
And I started with the samosa.
A samosa is a triangle shaped (or crescent shaped depending on where in South Asia they’re made) deep-fried pastry dough stuffed with deliciousness like chopped potatoes, onions and seasoning. Samosas are often served with tamarind date chutney or spicy mint chutney and can sometimes be a part of a chaat appetizer where hot spicy stewed chickpeas (or chana masala) is poured on top with chopped veggies, yogurt, and chutney.
Sweet versions of the samosa are also common and often enjoyed during holidays like Holi or Ramadan. But, what if the sweet stuffing was something typically enjoyed as a separate dish? In Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance, Radha takes the samosa she learned from her father and decides to put a twist on the classic by creating a sweet potato and marshmallow stuffed samosas for Thanksgiving. Why? Well, because she, like myself, live in the U.S. and grew up in a family that celebrated American-traditional Thanksgiving foods. So why not create something that celebrated both parts of our food culture?
In honor of my bicultural food identity steeped in traditional Indian cooking, and the American classics that I also learned growing up in the U.S. I want to share with you the recipe that isn’t included in Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance but was one of the most fun to make while writing the novel.
Radha & Nisha’s Sweet Potato Casserole Samosas
Total Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Cook Time: 15-20 minutes
Ingredients:
Dough
- 3 cups Maida flour (can use wheat or cake flour)
- ½ Water (add more as needed)
- 3 tbsp white sugar
Filling
- 1/3 cup Brown sugar
- 1 tsp White sugar
- 3 medium sweet potatoes
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/3 cup butter softened
- ½ cup Mini marshmallows
- 1 tsp Cinnamon
- 1 tsp Nutmeg
- 1 tsp Pumpkin pie spice
Frying
- 4 cups vegetable oil
- Cast iron pot
Process:
- Combine water and flour to create a tight dough. kneed in white sugar. Cover and let sit for 30 min.
- Boil sweet potatoes for 15 minutes until fork tender. Peel, add to a bowl, and mash (leave it a little chunky so it holds the shape in the samosa). Add sugar, butter, vanilla, seasoning. Let sit until cools to room temperature. Add marshmallows to the mix.
- Pinch dough to the size of a golf ball and roll into a round disk as thin as possible. Cut in half. With one half, wet your fingertips and run along the edges. Then, fold into a cone, and press the seams. Your seams must be airtight otherwise the marshmallows will ooze out.
- Fill the cone 2/3 of the way through with the mixture, then crimp the edge with a fork. Set on a parchment lined baking sheet until ready to cook.
- Heat oil on medium low heat in a cast iron pot. If you drop a tiny little piece of dough in the oil and it gently simmers, it’s the right temperature. If it sizzles and pops, it’s too hot.
- Add samosas in a single layer until they are completely covered by the oil. Let fry for 15 minutes. Take out and drain on a paper towel lined plate. If your samosas don’t have a crispy shell, then you can drop them back into the oil on a slightly higher heat for another 2 minutes.
- Once cool enough to touch, enjoy your sweet potato casserole samosa!
There are a ton of other variations you can make with the samosa, like replacing the dough with puff pastry, or phillo, or adding chocolate instead of marshmallows. The wetter the ingredients, the harder it is to keep the filling from leaking, so just keep that in mind.
If there is one thing I learned writing this book, and exploring my food culture with Radha, it’s that the concept of “traditional” dishes isn’t fixed. Traditional is a spectrum, and it changes. I hope that my story about food culture (and yes, Bollywood dancing) shares the same message with all of you.
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