How to make the perfect pastry

Samosas are traditionally made from a fairly sturdy pastry, presumably because, like the British pasty, this eminently portable snack was designed to travel well – they’re thought to have come to India from Central Asia in the saddlebags of Muslim merchants. Most people use plain flour, although Simon Daley, author of a book called Cooking with My Indian Mother-in-Law, makes his even more robust with strong white flour of the kind used for baking.

Madhur Jaffrey, Vivek Singh and Raghavan Iyer all work fat into the dough – the first two in the form of vegetable oil; the last, butter – while Daley relies on water alone to bring his pastry together, which makes his chewier than the others, though not unpleasantly so.

The butter version turns out more like a shortcrust than the crisp, flaky pastries produced by the oil, though this may also have something to do with the method: Iyer makes hers in the food processor, while Jaffrey and Singh gently rub the fat in by hand in the traditional way, which coats the proteins with fat while minimising gluten formation. It is then kneaded to partially develop the gluten, creating an elastic but still tender shell that is strong enough to withstand the pressures of stuffing and deep-frying, but soft enough to crumble obligingly in the mouth. With this end in mind, plain flour seems the better choice.

Despite Daley’s strict instructions to his readers to “Accept no substitutes!”, Meera Sodha’s book Made in India uses two layers of filo pastry, brushed with melted butter, for her “magic triangles”. This works surprisingly well, and is wonderfully quick though, as she observes, the results are lighter and crisper than the classic version.

Singh works nigella seeds into his pastry, which not only looks smart, but tastes delicious.