Ok. So maybe it’s not a fair fight since I haven’t tried all of the samosas on earth but out of the ones I have tried, these are the best. Maybe southern India will have some contenders. We’ll see.
A standard combination in northern India (perhaps all of India) is the samosa and sweet shop. They basically specialize in things that are made of all manner of dough – savory snacks like samosas, pakoras, and other crunchy fried snacks as well as sweets, perfectly piled up – ladoo, gulab jamun, rasgulla, and barfi. I was slowly warming up to the sweets by the time we got to Keylong but I already knew that samosas occupied a special place in my heart/stomach (same thing, right?). A little spark of electricity flows through me whenever I see them along the side of the road and Fern watches me with a look of pity as I engage in an internal struggle about whether to get some.
Look at them, just sitting there looking all innocent.
Since Fern was starting to drop little hints that I was getting too skinny I figured I should eat as many of these things as possible. Fortunately there were several places to get them very close to our hotel in Keylong and since we were sticking around for a while that gave me many opportunities to try a little of everything, or in some cases a lot. The first few places we tried were not so great. The shops themselves were pretty grungy and their food tasted strongly of overused oil. That’s especially unpleasant with the sweets. There was a place a bit farther down the road that caught my attention and after a few days I had to try it. It almost seemed strange because it was so clean inside the shop. It had windows that actually let sunlight in and clean tables to sit at. I was getting accustomed to the dark depressing grease pits near the hotel. This place stood out.
Isn’t it cute? It’s a lot cleaner on the inside.
The samosas had the perfect combination of moist potato with crunchy seeds, peas, herbs, and spices. And they were contained in a shell of pastry dough that never got soggy, and maintained its crunch and flakiness well into the next day. They made a wonderful hiking snack and we ended up taking a bag of about six samosas on every excursion. Somehow I found an excuse to go there almost every other day too.
At first it was just the samosas and maybe a couple of gulab jamun – balls of dough that are saturated in a sugary syrup. The good ones are literally dripping with sweetness. After we’d been there a few times they started giving us a little bag of chutney with the samosas. Oh man. That just pushed it over the top. Some of the best chutney I’ve ever had. It almost could have passed for a Mexican salsa – many similar ingredients. It was just so flavorful and tangy and the bite was aggressive without being harsh. It was the perfect sauce that could be put on anything savory to make it better, in fact, it was so universally wonderful that I just came up with a new name for it – Universe Chutney.
It seemed obvious that these guys knew what they were doing so I branched out and tried some of the different sweets. It was here that I discovered how good rasgulla could be. Rasgulla is similar to gulab jamun except that it has milk in with the dough. Cold, juicy, and refreshing – milky sweetness and syrup running down my chin.
Once I was hooked on the rasgulla, the main guy who ran the place started giving me little samples of different things. He seemed to always reach for one particular thing to let me try. Maybe he was especially proud of it and knew that I would fall in love with it once I gave it a chance. He was right.
It didn’t look like much at first. It basically looked a bit like a white barfi which is sort of like fudge without chocolate or peanut butter. I’m not a huge fan of barfi so I was a little resistant at first. It was simply called milk-cake and it was sweet but it had yak cheese in it and the texture was more moist and doughy than barfi and the rich milky flavor was more concentrated than in the rasgulla. Like a sticky gooey cheesecake. Delicious. I started adding a small chunk of milk-cake to my list when I went down there.
Wait, I just glossed over something important. Yak cheese. I asked the nice man if he knew where I could buy some yak cheese and he informed me that he sold it. Right over there in the fridge with the curd and other dairy products. My new hero. (after David Attenborough, of course)
I think I caught him in the middle of a nice head waggle there.
Fern and I started going in and sitting down for some chai instead of just getting samosas to-go. The two or three people who worked there were all very friendly. It’s a special little shop, in a special town with some special people and very special treats. I wish I could walk down there right now.
jim@snorkelbandits.com