Sluttishly Vegan: Samosa Stuffed Baked Potatoes

Continuing my theme of Indian recipes without the faff or deep-frying, here comes samosa stuffed baked potatoes, a recipe adapted from vegan cookbook Veganomicon. That might sound like a tofu-eating robot, but focus on the NOM bit of that title because this recipe is delicious.

It's not hard to assemble but baking the potatoes twice takes a while, so this is a better Sunday lunch than post-work dinner. The smell of the spices will get your taste buds going, and then all you need is to sit on the sofa and tuck in while browsing the Sunday papers and vaguely promising yourself that you'll go for a walk. Later. After the Eastenders omnibus, ok?

Samosa Stuffed Baked Potatoes (serves 2)

You will need:

• 2 large potatoes, baked and cooled
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/2 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
• 1/2 onion, diced
  
• 1 small carrot, diced
• 1 red chilli, diced
  
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 100g frozen peas
• 1/2 lemon
  
• 1/2 tsp garam masala

Make it!

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas Mark 6. Slice the cooled baked potatoes in half lengthwise and scoop out the insides, leaving about 0.5cm of potato in the skin. Use a teaspoon and go slowly to avoid the skin splitting.
2. You can mash the potato or do what I did and just chop it a little to leave it chunky. The manual labour's over now, so set the mash and skins aside.
3. Heat the oil over a medium heat in a saucepan and add the mustard seeds and ground coriander seeds (you can use ground coriander, but crushed seeds give a fresher flavour). Once they start to pop, add the onion and carrot and cook for 7-8 minutes until the onion softens. Add the chilli and garlic and fry for another minute, then sprinkle in the cumin, turmeric and salt. Stir for another minute.
4. Add the mashed potato and mix until the turmeric turns it all yellow. Throw in the peas, a squeeze of lemon juice and the garam masala, and warm it all through. Don't worry too much about the peas as they'll be cooked again.
5. Spoon the filling into the potato skins and bake for 20 minutes.

Ta daaaa - the flavour of samosas without the bother of rolling out pastry or the unhealthiness of deep frying. VegaNOMicon indeed.