Shingara
A deep-fried, shortcrust pastry with a filling of potato, coconut, and peanuts, accompanied with a sweet-sour tamarind dipping sauce.
- Cooking time3 hours
Calorieskcal
A couple of years back we posted a phulkopir singara recipe. Today's recipe uses a plain potato filling instead. Plus, this includes several modifications to the crust/pastry that we have been working on over the last two years. So, you could think of this as the singara pastry version 2.0.
Unlike the phulkopir shingara, this time we boiled the potatoes, as it's faster and that's what most shops do. We also used hing and coconut while cooking the filling. The spice mix is pretty much the same as before, except that we've skipped chaat masala—we felt that it was not needed. For the dough, we have increased the the fat content to 25% (of the flour), up from 15%. Turns out the secret to a tender, flaky crust is lots of dalda/ghee. The water too has increased (from 35% to 40% of flour). This dough will be a lot easier to knead and roll than the previous version. Finally, we felt our crust for the phulkopir shingara was too thick, so we've dropped portions from 60 g to 50 g.
Books in this recipe
Ingredients
FILLING
- 500 g potatoes
- 25 g mustard oil
- 10 g coconut
- 10 g peanuts
- 1 pc dried red chillies
- 1 tsp panch phoron
- ¼ tsp hing (asafoetida)
- 18 g ginger
- 6 g green chillies
- 12 g sugar
- 2 g salt
- 4 g beetnoon (black salt)
- ½ tsp kasuri methi (dried fenugreek)
- 200 g water
SPICE MIX (ONLY 5 G NEEDED)
- 5 g coriander powder
- 4 g cumin powder
- 4 g turmeric
- 3 g red chilli powder
- 2 g amchur (dried-mango powder)
- 2 g gorom moshla
FOR THE PASTRY
- 240 g maida (all-purpose flour)
- 3 g salt
- 5 g sugar
- 60 g ghee/dalda
- 100 g water
Method
PREPARING THE FILLING
- Wash the potatoes well and cut them into 1-cm cubes. Leave the skin on for flavour.
- Boil the potatoes in a saucepan. They should be well cooked but hold their shape. Drain and reserve the water.
- Grind ginger and green chillies to a paste. Finely slice coconut.
- Make the spice mix by combining the spices in the given proportions, and keep handy.
- Heat mustard oil in a kadai until it smokes slightly and turns pale yellow. Add coconut and fry until golden. Set aside.
- Add peanuts. Fry until golden and set aside.
- Temper the same oil with a dried red chilli and panch phoron. Add hing.
- Add the ginger and green chilli paste. Mix well. Be careful not to burn the spices; if required turn off the heat for some time.
- Add 5 g of spice mix, along with sugar, salt, beetnoon, and kasuri methi. Fry until the oil separates.
- Add boiled potatoes and water (you can use the water in which potatoes were boiled). If your potatoes are too mushy, don't add as much water.
- Cook on medium-high heat until the water dries up.
- Add the fried coconut and peanuts. Mix well.
- Turn the heat off. Discard the dried red chilli. Spread the filling out to cool.
MAKING THE COATING
- Combine maida, salt, sugar and dalda in a mixing bowl. Rub the mixture between your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs in texture.
- Add water and knead until smooth. Rest for at least 30 minutes before you can start working with it.
- Divide the dough in 50 g portions. Each portion will yield 2 shingaras.
- Roll each portion into an oval shape (about 28 × 16 cm).
- Cut the rolled-out oval along the shorter diameter, dividing the pastry into two semi-circles.
- Form a cone by joining the straight edges. Seal using water.
- With the seam resting on your thumb, fill the cone with the potato filling. Fold as shown in this video.
- Fry the shingaras in lukewarm oil (~100°C).
- Fry on low to medium-low heat, such that the maximum oil temperature never crosses 125°C. If the oil gets too hot, the coating will remain doughy. You should see little bubbles in the oil, and not vigorous activity.
- Turn every 5 minutes until shingaras are evenly golden. Each batch should take around 30 minutes.
- Once golden, remove from the oil. Since the shingaras are scorching hot, let them rest for at least 20 minutes before taking a bite.
