Potato Curry Puffs

"A poor workman blaming his tools!"
It was on the spur of the moment that I decided to make these. I had in the past few days been browsing some pastry books and came across a spiral curry puff recipe. They are the ones that have shell-like spiral patterns which are sold at some curry puff stalls like A1. I have always been fascinated with the pattern. The instructions were simple to follow but lacked certain details as I discovered later while making it. Mine didn't turn out accordingly. After clearing up, I was feeling so disappointed that I decided to read up to check if I had missed out any important tips. There I came across another recipe that called for a similar pastry and this time on its pages were the step by step instructions and pics. The author of the book could have made references to those pages with pics and the result would probably be better. Hmmm....... :(

I halved the recipe and followed the steps exactly word for word from the book in the dough-making.

Ingredients:
Potato curry filling (Any dry curry with or without meat will do)

Water Dough:(full recipe)
260g flour (Book says flour and I assumed it's plain flour)
50g margarine (I used butter)
20g sugar (I used caster sugar)
140g water

"Mix all the ingredients to form a smooth dough and divide it into 2 equal portions and let it rest for 20 minutes."


Oil Dough:

180g flour ( I used plain flour)
100g shortening (I used crisco)

"Mix all the ingredients to form a smooth paste and divide into 2 equal portions.

The dough with the dent is the oil dough and the other is the water dough.


Method:

1. Wrap the oil dough with water dough. Roll out the dough into rectangular shape.
Make a book fold.(I assumed that it was just a one layer fold like a book but in another recipe the pics showed a three-fold, overlapping just like when you do flaky puffs pastry to get the layers.)

Oil dough in water dough


2. Roll it into thin sheet to 2-mm thickness. Roll it up like Swiss roll.


3. Let it rest for 10 minutes. Then cut it into 8 pieces. Repeat the steps for the second portion.

4. Flatten the dough then roll it into 3-mm thickness. Wrap the filling inside the pastry and pinch together the edge.
Cut dough piece flattened and rolled out. Notice the slight circular lines on the rolled pastry

No sign of the spirals! Sob! :(


5. Fry it in hot oil until golden brown in colour.

Barely in the hot oil for 1 minute and it changed colour. The pastry inside was not cooked yet. That's why the fried ones became very dark.


* Book says the curry puffs can be baked but with no further instructions regarding temperature or duration.

Verdict: A disastrous -looking lot of curry puffs but the pastry is crispy whether fried or baked.
I fried 2 curry puffs but they ended up looking so dark - almost burnt. So I decided to bake the rest. It took 35 to 40 minutes to bake to get the slightly brown colour. I should have egg-glazed them.

What a disaster! No spiral lines!

Picture from the book. See the difference!