apricot and purple potato samosas with honey yogurt sauce

What's more fun than purple potatoes? Now really. Its like the natural equivalent to green ketchup: one of your favorite childhood foods in a fun color. They're plenty full of carotenoids which will help eliminate free radicals in your body, essentially detoxing the cells and keeping them pure. They're also crazy fun to cook with for the only reason being that they are so much fun to look at. 

So when I went home to cook my mom dinner, I threw these guys in there. I muddied them up with some fantastic Indian spices. Then I threw in some game changing apricots and walnuts, and rolled them in fillo dough.  To flash fry these little table footballs, I opted for healthy sesame oil, a favorite of Ayurvedic practitioners and ancient cultures of the west. To top them off, I paired the samosas with a  sweet yogurt dipping sauce, the easiest thing you'll ever make.Yum. Sweet, nutty, aromatic  and full of soft potato texture, these guys were a huge hit.

Samosa Ingredients (makes a dozen):

3 Purple potatoes, peeled, boiled, and mashed lightly with a fork

3/4 Cup Chopped Turkish Apricots

1/2 Cup Chopped Walnuts

2 Tsp Indian Curry Powder

1/2 Tsp Tumeric

1 Tsp Cinnamon

1 Tsp Salt

1 Pkg Fillo Dough Sheets 

*be sure to remove dough from the freezer and place it on the counter at least an hour before you plan to use

Yogurt Sauce Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Greek Yogurt

1 Tbsp Honey

1/2 Tsp Marsala Seasoning

Directions:

1. Mix together all samosa ingredients except for the fillo dough. Make sure that your potatoes still have a little bit of chunk to them, and then let everything sit until room temperature.

2. Mix together dipping sauce ingredients, and let it chill in the fridge while you finish making the samosas. 

3. Unrolling your fillo dough and using a big knife, cut the end of your sheet into a 3"-4" strip.

4. Take a heaping tablespoon of your mixture, and form it into a little triangle. Place the triangle on the bottom left-hand corner of your fillo dough strip. Continue to roll it up like a table football.

5. Once you've rolled it up, do it once more so that the samosa has two layers of dough.

6. Once you've rolled all of your samosas, pour about a 1/2" of sesame oil into your frying pan, and let it get hot. 

7. Fry samosa's 1-2 minutes on each side, until lightly browned

8. Serve with sauce

raw brussel sprout and goat cheese salad

Those of you who pick up produce at a farmer's market or participate in a CSA are well acquainted with brussel sprouts and the rest of the cruciferous family (kale, kohlrabi, bok choy, turnips, etc.), those strange vegetables that appear in your plot each week. You might run out of ideas on what to do with them, but hey, that's when we always get the most creative, right? 

So here's a novel idea, raw brussel sprouts. I would have never thought it, but I discovered it in one of those "what am I going to do this time" moments. I got to chopping and realized that the key is breaking the vegetable up into smaller bits. Once sliced, the bites are crunchy, watery, and full of that splendid brussel sprout flavor. There's something about raw vegetables that you just can't beat. It's like you can taste the nutrients, that straight from the earth goodness. To finish the salad off, I mixed the brussel sprouts in with some herbed goat cheese and walnuts, then tossed with simple seasonings, and I had the most care-free, delicious side dish. 

Speaking of tasting the nutrients...did you know that brussel sprouts are rich in vitamin C? Something we all can't get enough of this time year. So soak it up, eat em raw and down that medicine. You can thank your CSA later for giving you the natural germ fighters you need to get through the season.

Ingredients (Serves 6):

1 Lb Brussel Sprouts, cleaned and sliced

2 Oz Herbed Goat Cheese

1 Cup Walnuts, chopped

2 Tbsp Sesame Oil

2 Tbsp Lemon Juice

Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:

Mix it up and serve!