Recipe Mushroom and Walnut Samosas

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This recipe will work well as a filling for veggie rolls or pastries, as well as the suggested samosas.
Phyllo pastry sizes vary, so you may need more or less depending on the size of your sheets.
Filling quantities don't really need to be exact, so don't worry if you only have 120g of walnuts but have 700g of mushrooms. Yes, it will be marginally different to my filling, but that does not mean it won't be nice. The amount of green chillies is, as always, your choice, and there is nothing stopping you from subbing them for red chillies if you want something spicier. I also think this would work nicely with shortcrust pastry as well, for a larger pasty.

Mushroom and Walnut Samosas

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• Today at 2:39 AM

Ingredients
600-700g mushrooms, quartered
120-150g walnuts
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1.5 tsp black mustard seeds
1.5 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp nigella seeds/black onion seeds/black cumin seeds
1 large onion, chopped finely
6-8 large cloves of garlic, minced
2-4cm ginger, peeled and finely grated
1-2 large green chillies, finely diced - your choice on the seeds
0.5 tsp sea salt, finely ground
0.5 tsp black pepper, finely ground

6 or 8 sheets of phyllo/filo pastry
vegan butter or olive oil to coat, melted If using butter or vegan margarine

Method

1. Put the walnuts into a food processor and grind as fine as it will go - they won't be flour, but that is fine. We are not after flour. Tip into a bowl and set aside.
2. Repeat the process in batches with the mushrooms. You could chop both the walnuts and mushrooms as finely as possible by hand if you wish.
3. Heat the oil in a large skillet, add the oil and the seed spices, and toast until they start to move. Add the onions, mix well and fry for 8-10 minutes until the onions are just starting to brown. Add the garlic, ginger and chillies, and cook for another 5 minutes. The onions should be browning by now - that is fine. If they are catching on the bottom of the pan, add in a small quantity of mushrooms, which will stop them from burning.
   
   

   Onions and seeds

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4. Add the mushrooms, mix well, and cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring well periodically. Add the salt and pepper and continue cooking until all of the water from the mushrooms has evaporated. The mixture must be dry, so if in doubt, keep cooking (you will end up with soggy pastry otherwise). The mixture is dry enough when it starts to catch and leave a coating on the bottom of the skillet. If the skillet is still clean on the base, they are not dry enough. Now add the walnuts, and cook for 3-4 minutes more and remove from the heat - do not cover.
5. Preheat the oven to 200C fan assisted. If needed, line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper (I did not bother and had no issues.)
6. The size of your phyllo pastry comes into play here. Take 1 sheet of pastry, coat it with melted butter or warm olive oil, and add a second sheet. (It is anticipated that your phyllo pastry is landscape to you, not portrait.) Now cut in half, top to bottom and place 1 side on top of the other. Next, cut the 4 sheets into thirds horizontally. You will now have 6 narrow strips, each of 2 sheets thick.
7. Take 30g of the cool, dry mixture and form a ball. Vaguely shape this into a triangle on one end of the strip. Also, make sure that you butter or oil the right-hand half of the pastry sheet before you start folding. It seals everything in for you, holding the samosa's contents together.
   
   
8. Now, you need to fold carefully - it took me a couple of attempts, you need 45-degree angles for this to work. So line up the left-hand vertical edge and the Top horizontal edge in the image when you fold the pastry and filling. Don't worry that there is an open edge for filling to escape from - the green fold is the critical one that seals this open corner. If you want to, get a piece of paper (1/3rd of a sheet of A4/letter and try it out.) Keep folding as indicated until you run out of pastry! You will get to the point where there is a partial fold at the very end. The remaining pastry can either be cut off, or folded over again.
9. And repeat with the remaining 5 cut pastry strips.
10. Then repeat step 6 and make another 6 cut strips, fill and fold.
11. When you think you are down to your final amount of filling, decide if it will make 3 or fewer samosas or 4 or more. If it is 3 or fewer, use one sheet of cut pastry folded in half, to make the final 3 strips, rather than following step 6 (which uses 2 sheets and makes 6 strips).
12. Now, the easy bit, if required, oil/butter the top of the uncooked samosas on the baking sheet, and bake for 12-15 minutes in the oven.
13. Serve whilst still hot for crispy phyllo pastry.

Adapted from a Guardian recipe.