I have been wanting to try to make things like spring rolls and samosas from scratch for a long time and whilst I have made them with bought wrappers and filo pastry in the past I have never made the wrappers before.
Well I found a recipe which called for a lot of kneeding and rolling out thin, then it struck me that as I have a food processer and a pasta machine that I could try to use both for the purpose rather than do it all by hand. Which is what I did and the results were, for a first try very good.
I found the recipe on an Asian/ American site and it is fairly simple, even though the quantities are in cups.
1 egg
one third of a cup of cold water
2 cups of all purpose flour (I used self raising)
half a teaspoon of salt.
Mix the water with the beaten egg and then slowy add it to the flour and salt. It should be like a too soft shortcrust pastry mix which clears the mixing bowl clean.
This needs resting for at least half an hour in the fridge which is just right for cleaning away and having a brew.
The mixture is supposed to make 36 rolled out to three and a half inches by three and a half inch squares.
I just put it through the pasta machine in batches starting at number 2 and got it down to number 5. (At 6 it started to go into holes). Then cut it into squares to the size of the pasta machine's width and got 28 squares out of it.
As it was just a test, I put in some left overs as fillings to see if it would work out, using a beaten egg to seal.
I deep fried the wantons, samosas and spring rolls in the hottest the deep fat fryer would go up to, a few at a time, stirring them gently with a wooden spoon so that they would be brown all over because I find cooking one side then trying to turn them means they flip back over to the cooked side.
So, if you fancy having a go one rainy day when there is nothing better to do, have a go and let me know how you get on with yours.