Samosa Is A Real Global Snack

I have a small story to share with you. I was shopping at Nordstom Mall at Westlake area in Seattle. Tired after shopping, I decided to visit its Food court at Top Floor. there was a small eating outfit called Bombay Wala . I flipped its Menu Card and there was my favourite Samosa. I ordered a plate costed me 10 dollars, which is equivalent to roughly Rs.650/-. The plate contained two Samosas with some green salad and chutney. Very yummy. That day I realized that this Indian Snack traveled almost 14,000 km.
A friend of mine who is in USA from last so many years, he told me that Africans also have a snack which is very close to our Samosa. I tried its vegetarian version filled with beans. Later researched a bit than found that Samaos or its cousins are present in all the five continents.
Let me share with you Samosa's global reach.

  
 When somebody even mention about  Samosa, we  always have an urge to eat one. That is the power of our staple snack called Samosa. There are so many ways to eat it,   munch on as a tea-time snack or when and whenever sudden hunger-pangs hit. But if I say Samosa is not Indian at all, you will look at my face with utter disbelief! The reason of your shock I can easily understand, you go to North, you go to South, you go to East or the west, this snack is everywhere from street corner to a five star hotel. And probably Samosa is the only snack which is not any caste, community or class specific, everybody simply love it.

This triangular potato/vegetables/meat-filled savoury dish  is actually has origins in the Middle East. Arabs called it 'Sambosa', it was actually introduced to the country sometime between the 13th and 14th century by traders of the Middle East. But whatever, we're just happy we get to hog these yummy yummy snacks! 

 I am sure by now your mouth is already watering. The very thought of these calorie-filled dough balls, deep-fried and then soaked is enough to send anyone to food heaven. And what's more, this dish is so versatile that you can enjoy it hot, cold or simply at room temperature. 

It has its origin in the Mediterranean and Persia. Though the original form of Samosa is called Luqmat-al- Qadi and made of dough balls deep fried, soaked in honey syrup and sprinkled with sugar, once it reached India, the recipe was modified. How we wish it was lunch-time already!

It was earliest and most important food bartering went on between Mesopotamia and India, thanks to the peripatetic and food-loving Persians; and if the proof is not in the pudding, it's at least in the dumpling -- that little curry-flavored fried triangle called, with only slight variations, the samosa.

Journey of Samosa is far and wide, it traveled to Burma and Malaysia from India through traders-sailors. It  reached Afghanistan, most of the  East European countries, from Iran to Ethiopia to Spain and even Central and South America -- stuffed with ground meat, potatoes or local legumes -- the sturdy little samosa has made itself a staple. 

We usually consider them appetizers, but they were more often portable meals or street vendor fast food. Using menus as an armchair map, you can retrace the route of this adaptable bit of ethnic cuisine and even catch a whiff of the many civilizations it's passed through.

In the beginning was wheat -- an appropriate phrase, since wheat is native to the Mesopotamian region where the Garden of Eden or its historical equivalent lay. Bread and fermentation, meaning yeast (yes, and beer), are among humans' earliest discoveries, some 7,000 years old. As long as 5,000 years ago, there were great figure-eight-shaped trade routes winging out from Babylonia east through India, China and Indonesia; and west all around the Mediterranean from the tip of Iberia, past Lebanon and Tyre and Ethiopia to the Phoenicians' great capital at Carthage in North Africa. Wheat, olives and olive oil moved east; central Asian lamb and goat moved south; Indonesian cumin, garlic, turmeric and peppercorns spread west.

The cumin and chili-spiked ground meat filling found in Middle Eastern samosas (first cousin to kofta, the meatballs or cigar-shaped patties) spread into India with the great Persian and Turkish empires as well as visiting traders. In conquering Persia, Alexander the Great acquired northern India, too; and many of his Greek and Turkish subjects settled in Central Asia, carrying kofta and samosas (and the tanur, or tandoor, oven) into Afghanistan, Nepal, etc. Meat was originally quite common in India; but the climate was less hospitable to beef cattle, and a reliable supply of dairy products became more valuable for protein. Eventually Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism all prohibited meat consumption.

At the end of the 14th century, the Turk Tamerlane, who claimed direct descent from Genghis Khan, marched into northern India, followed by his grandson, Babur, who established the Moghul -- i.e., Mongol -- empire. The Moghuls continued to indulge their historical passion for meat, so that meat-filled samosas are more common in northern Indian Muslims, Potato filled Samosa among the north Indian Hindus. In the south, however, veggie samosas are the rule. Originally most were spinach- or lentil-stuffed, but once potatoes were brought over from the New World by the Portuguese, along with hot chili peppers, they quickly became a popular filling.

The same intrepid Portuguese and their Arab trading partners obligingly carried samosas back with them to North and West Africa, and thus  snack food was born.


Not surprisingly, considering its long and close ties to southern Indian food, Burmese "golden triangles," as they are called at the Burma, are also vegetarian. But, since the cooking of the Malay peninsula and Singapore have such mixed European and Indian influences, the Malaysian curry puffs at Spices are stuffed with ground chicken and the ones at Straits of Malaya with beef.

The Afghani version, which is generally stuffed with beef and/or chickpeas, is also called a sambusa or a "sambosa" (as at Paradise in Bethesda) or (as at Panjshir, the Falls Church and Vienna restaurants) a "sambusay."

Farther west, nearly all countries have at least some meat samosas. At Adams-Morgan's longtime West African nightspot Kilimanjaro, samosas, both beef and veggie, are among the kitchen's best items, big and crunchy. At Meskerem, one of the area's premier Ethiopian restaurants, they are listed as "sambussas" and come stuffed with either ground beef or lentils with green chilies. And some Lebanese restaurants offer "pies" that are basically samosas in pita dough.

 The Spanish, who learnt to enjoy Samosa from the Moors, took to them with alacrity, renaming them Empanadas and carried them over to the New World immediately, along with the beef and pork for the stuffing. There, however, the wheat flour was replaced by cornmeal, the olive oil (which the Spanish monopolized) by lard and eventually the samosa were transformed into the empanadas, pasteles, saltenas.

The Indian laborers who arrived in the Caribbean Islands sometime in eighteen and nineteen century  reestablished their own versions. The Jamaican "pasty," influenced by both the Indian and British versions, is about a third-cousin, once removed and several times replaced. Depending on their actual origin, Caribbean chefs may produce either the Spanish (Cuban) or Indian (Jamaican) style. 

 East European dumplings and pastries are also close cousins of Samosa. It is known with different names  as Pirozhki and Pelmeni in Russian, Piroshki in Hungary, Perogies in Poland , Piroghi in  Finland. Thanks to early Black Sea/Baltic Sea trade through Poland and Russia, Genghis Khan's mad dash across Europe and the Ottoman Turkish conquests of Romania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Which means, of course, that when the Eastern European Jews took Knishes, their potato turnovers, to Israel, they were, in a sense, coming full circle.