Sambusai Varaqi

I have the best khola in the world. She's shattered gender boundaries to share with me the art of baking sambusas, the Central Asian cousin (ancestor?) of the Indian samosa. Since I was napping at the time, I wasn't able to see exactly how she made the dough, which is the toughest part. She said she used something like two big cupped-handfuls of flour, water, and some salt to taste. My guess is that the flour she used had a really high gluten content because she didn't use any egg yolks but even so the dough was super springy and supple. In any case, she rolled out the dough the Central Asian way by wrapping the floured dough several times around a dowel and then working it from side to side rather than into a flat circle. It's miraculous to watch! Khola then spread the dough and spooned oil all over the surface. Then she rolled the dough again into a big rope that she then squeezed all over so that it would stick together. Next she had me cut the rope into the pieces pictured above. We then pressed them into fat discs that we rolled out into proper circles later. Then she had me spoon in the filling and then fold them into triangles. For the filling khola uses raw ground beef, onion, and cumin, though people also use pumpkin and sometimes potatoes or cheese curd. We baked them in a medium oven, I'm guessing something like 375 degrees. They turned out gorgeous and were so much flakier and lighter than the ones for sale on the street. I can't wait to try making a batch of pumpkin sambusas this fall.