Samosa-inspired croquettes with peas and potatoes

Alice had a crazy idea after I got back from India: the two of us should get together and make an entire Indian meal from scratch.

The subject line of her email was “dal experiments.” It had a mysterious ring to it, which pretty much signifies the way I felt about Indian food before I went to India — that it was just too hard to master (or even attempt to master) if you didn’t grow up eating it. The flavors were too complex.

Now, armed with my spices that I bought in Bombay, I’m a lot more comfortable than I used to be. I’ve been currying a lot lately — mostly garbanzos with some mustard seed, ginger, green chiles, chile powder and cumin. The thought of coming up with an entire Indian menu seemed like the next logical step, especially since I had a cookbook I’d picked up in Kodaikanal filled with recipes for sambars, idlis, pulaus, rasams.

So one day over a curry lunch, Alice and I came up with a relatively simple menu: dosas and sambar for the main dishes, because they’re typical of South India and famous throughout the country. For dessert, mango rice pudding, because mangoes overfloweth from Mexico right now. And for the appetizer, potato-and-pea croquettes.

The idea behind the croquettes was to mimic the flavors you’d get in a samosa, without creating something super fritanga. (Fritanga is a word I just learned in Spanish. It means “fried things.”) We’d pan fry the croquettes instead of deep-fry. (I voted for deep frying, but Alice convinced me otherwise. Calories, Lesley, calories.)

I’ll write about the rice pudding, dosas and sambar in another post. This post is all about the croquettes, because they deserve their own spotlight.

Unbeknownst to me, I’d discriminated against croquettes in my recent, supposedly “food serious” years. I liked to eat croquettes at Spanish restaurants. But I had absolutely no desire to cook them myself, because they were too complicated. Did I know this to be fact? No. They just looked difficult. All that shaping. All that frying until they’re a perfect golden-brown. (This from the girl who once tried to convince her husband to buy her a Fry Daddy.)

If we were already going to be making dosas, however, spending a little more energy on the croquettes probably wouldn’t be so bad. So we peeled and boiled some potatoes in Alice’s pressure cooker. We boiled some fresh peas. We prepared our spices for frying — I think the correct word in the Indian cuisine lexicon is “tempering.”

The spices came from Alice’s handy spice canister, a gift from her mother-in-law.

When the potatoes were done, we let them cool and then mashed them.

Potatoes properly smashed, we heated some oil in a skillet ’til it was smoking hot. Added our spices and peas, and then poured everything together into a bowl.

We shaped the potato-pea-spice mixture into oblong, chubby nuggets. Then, while sipping ginger-ale and Bombay Sapphire cocktails with mint leaves, we dredged each croquette in egg, flour and panko breadcrumbs. (I had a bag of forgotten panko crumbs in my pantry, or else we would have used bolillo crumbs.)

After about 10 minutes of cooking, we had crunchy, golden-brown treasures that were soft and potatoey on the inside, with a twinge of warmth from the cumin.

We decided to pair them with a sweet chili jam I bought in Bombay, and an avocado-orange pico de gallo that I threw together. (The chili jam trumped the pico, because the pico kind of fell apart into a wet, messy salsa.)

Seriously. These croquette things were not hard. Granted, you do need maybe 45 minutes to throw everything together, but the only hands-on type of work is chopping one onion, and molding your potatoes. I’ll definitely be making these again.

Samosa croquettes with peas and potatoes
Makes about 12 to 14 croquettes
Adapted from Gourmet’s Potato Samosa Phyllo Triangles

1 pound potatoes
1 small onion, chopped
1 teaspoon mustard seed
3/4 teaspoon garam masala
3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
3/4 teaspoon coriander seeds
Scant 1/2 cup frozen peas, or fresh if you’ve got them
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
splash of milk
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs, or the crumbs of your choice
vegetable or canola oil

Wash and peel your potatoes, and place them in a pot covered with water. You can use a pressure cooker or a regular old pot; or, alternatively, a microwave. If you’re using the microwave, sprinkle a bit of water and place them in a microwave-proof bowl covered with plastic wrap. Cook until they’re tender. When they’re done, remove them from your cooking receptacle of choice and let them cool. Then mash them with a potato masher. (Or a bean masher!)

Heat a glug or two of oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet or heavy-bottomed frying pan. (The flame should veer more toward “high” than medium.) While the oil is heating, make sure you have your spices ready to go — you want to add them into the pan in one fell swoop while everything’s got.

When the oil is very hot, add your mustard seeds. When they start to crackle and sputter, add your onion and spices. Stir to coat, and let them cook for several minutes, until the spices start to darken and appear dangerously close to burning. (Don’t add water, I promise it will all turn out okay.) Everything will start to smell heavenly. Then, add your peas and stir and cook for a few minutes until they’re coated and warmed. When you’re satisfied, add this mixture to your waiting bowl of potatoes.

Add your salt, and stir everything together gently. While the mixture cools, prepare your dredging station: one small bowl of flour, one with your egg and milk, which you’ll whisk together; and lastly, one with your breadcrumbs.

Shape your croquettes into oblong, fat little nuggets. (Or really, whatever shape you want.) Dredge each one first in flour, then egg, and then breadcrumbs. When you have enough to fill the pan, heat up your oil and commence to frying, once the oil is hot. Try to cook them so that they’re evenly browned, perhaps 5 minutes per side. Serve hot.