Name: Hyderabadi-style samosas (Filled with red onion, mint and green chilli)
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: Makes about 12 samosas
Cuisine: Pakistani
Ingredients: ¾ tsp salt; handful of coriander (cilantro) leaves, roughly chopped; 12 samosa sheets or filo pastry (phyllo dough) cut into 24 sheets; 500 ml/17 fl oz/2 cups sunflower oil, for frying, plus 2 tbsp sunflower oil, for sealing; juice of ½ lemon; 1–2 thin green chillies, finely chopped; 6–8 mint leaves, roughly chopped; large handful of powa/poha (dried pressed rice, available in South Asian stores); ½ tsp chaat masala; 1 tsp dry-roasted cumin seeds; ½ tsp red chilli powder; 1–2 medium red onions, cut into fine half-moons

Preparation info

Makes about
12
samosas

Difficulty
Easy
Ready in
35 min

Appears in

Summers Under the Tamarind Tree

By Sumayya Usmani

Published 2016

About

I came across these samosas in the bustling Hyderabadi colony in Karachi – an area filled with immigrants from Hyderabad in India who settled there at the time of partition in 1947. Their cuisine is rich, aromatic and renowned in Pakistan as being very festive. The special ingredient here is pawa (a dried flattened rice), which soaks up all the juices from the onions, leaving tiny, crisp, moreish parcels of flavour.