Deep-Fried Curry Puffs

Traditional Malay Recipes, p. 62

Cooking oil for deep-frying

Filling Ingredients

10 oz/310 g chicken meat (diced)

2 potatoes (diced)

1 large onion (diced)

2 tbsp curry powder and 1 tbsp water mixed into a paste

½ grated coconut (squeeze out santan/coconut milk without adding water)

Salt to taste

Pastry Ingredients

12 oz/375 g flour and a little salt, sifted

6oz/180g margarine

½ cup/120 ml water

This is your new best friend/worst enemy. I got one that was supposed to be easier to open because it had a groove inside. This was a terrible lie. The groove did NOTHING.

To drain the coconut water out of the middle, use a hammer and a nail to poke a hole in each of the three eyes on the one end.

Then leave it in the sink, holes down, so the liquid inside can seep out.

Ideally you can leave it in the sink for a few hours, but if that doesn't work out you can let it drain while you chop the other fresh ingredients.

Now that the liquid is gone, you get to have some fun. If you want to be a purist, you can attack this beloved tropical fruit with a machete. (My partner happened to have one laying around. For some reason.)

An easier method is to wrap it in a towel and beat the bejeezus out of it with a hammer.

It's a slow process, and in this case seems to have been particularly agonizing for the coconut. 

Once you get the thing into pieces, voila! You can grate them!

...and then move on to this recipe's many other demands. Like curry paste.

To prepare filling, heat 3 tablespoon of the oil and fry onions till soft. Add curry paste and fry till fragrant.

Add chicken meat and fry till cooked. 

I got chicken thighs because they were cheaper. When I asked for 10 ounces of them the guy behind the meat counter looked at me like I had asked for a woolly mammoth gizzard.

Put in potatoes and mix well.

Add santan and salt. Simmer till potatoes are cooked. Dish up and put aside to cool.

This where you should stop. Really. They have you make this nice curry, and now they're about to ask you to ruin it.

To prepare pastry, put sifted ingredients in a mixing bowl. Add margarine and rub with finger tips till mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Gradually adding water, mix into a smooth dough.

Roll out dough on a floured board to ¼ in/6 mm thickness. Cut out into 3 ½ in/9 cm circles.

If you do what they tell you in the proportions they tell you, it makes buttery flour soup. I tried to improvise and add enough flour to make this an actual dough.

I cut the circles with a floured drinking glass. 

Place filling in the centre and fold over. Pinch edges to seal securely.

There is ZERO room for filling in these things. You can't even fit a teaspoon into each one. Most of the curry becomes leftovers and never even makes it into a puff. 

Heat oil for deep frying. Fry curry puffs till both sides are golden brown.

This is where disaster really struck. As soon as they hit the oil, all the dough immediately abandoned ship and left the filling deep-frying by itself in a sea of floury grease. Puffs? I think not. 

Drain well and arrange neatly on plate. Serve. 

Eventually I gave up on deep-frying and just pan-fried them, and they came out SLIGHTLY better. But disgusting. I mean, the fried dough was really disgusting. 

So we made a dinner out of the nice potato curry that was supposed to be the filling. The End. 

My Rating: 1/5 "This recipe is a waste. Make the curry, sure, but the puffs are doomed from the beginning. The best part is cracking the coconut."