Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you savoury dinner that doubles as a nice mid-afternoon snack or late-night dessert courtesy of InterWined’s Own Ricotta & Sun-dried Tomato Samosas.

InterWined could bore you with stories of the history of the samosa and it’s journey from the middle-east to India or somesuch, but that would be boring. See, you’re already yawning. It would also be misleading, because these samosas are samosas in name only and inspired by a bit of late night food television viewing and a recipe for what was by all accounts an apple turnover that the chef chose to rename an apple samosa. I might have been tired, and it might have been late, and I might not remember the name of the programme, but the simple samosa recipe stuck in my head.

And now, I’m sticking it in yours.

Making your own dough can be daunting; it certainly is for InterWined. In fact, I’ve yet to follow a recipe for making dough and get the appropriate results, from the stated measures of ingredients. I’m forever having to adjust the flour or the water or the milk or whatever to make the mixture wetter or dryer and easier to knead into dough. And, even though, I vow each never to make my own dough again…I always do and almost always get the same mixed results.

Not this time. This time, I followed a simple formula of 2 parts flour to just less than 1 part water. And it worked.

Now what about those samosas?

Citrus fruit and ricotta are classic pairing partners and regularly feature in numerous Italian recipes, such as those for cannoli. While InterWined recipe for Ricotta & Sun-dried Tomato Samosas doesn’t include citrus and isn’t Italian, the same classic thinking prevails with pairing them with a wine.

The 2005 Château Saransot Dupré Blanc Sec (12.5%) Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon (60/40 blend from Bordeaux, currently available from Cadman Fine Wines for £8.99, brings with it a zippy acidity that pairs well with the peppery ricotta of the somosa, the Sauvignon Blanc helping the wine to find balance with the creamy flavour of the ricotta cheese.

It’s the salt, found of the sun-dried tomato, that proves the most challenging aspect in this pairing and, as mentioned in previous ‘Blow the Bank’ posts, countless others. However, the creaminess of the ricotta mixed with pepper and the Semillon in the wine do a nice job of taming it and preventing the wine’s overall acidity from clashing with the saltiness of the sun-dried tomatoes and leaving a pucker on the lips and a grimace on the face.

On the nose, the Château Saransot Dupré gives a good mix of mild honey and hay that translates as pretty well to the mouth where the honey clearly dominates before finishing with a slightly sharp zip of lemon and acid.

Personally, hay is one of those strange terms that sometimes appears in tasting notes that, while entirely accurate, is kind of meaningless to anyone who didn’t grow up near horses, under a thatched roof, or chewing it while pretending to be Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, a gunslinger from a 1950s’ Western. It’s like gooseberry…only people that have had the occasion to eat enough gooseberry so as to create a sense of it in their minds, noses, and palates should ever be allowed to use that tasting note — especially when describing Sauvignon Blanc. Why would such a common wine smell of such an uncommon fruit? No one ever says the reverse, “This gooseberry smells exactly like a 2004 Sancerre from Château Pretentious Tasting Note”. Do they?

Well, I am not one of those gooseberry gobblers. But, I do know what hay tastes like, since I did grow up doing one of those things (any guesses?) and, thus, feel pretty OK using it to describe the wine. It’s a bit…hay.

And, for those worried about their salt intake, the current unpopularity of sun-dried tomatoes, hay-tasting, or the availability of the Château Saransot Dupré Blanc Sec, a great alternative would be to replace the sun-dried tomatoes with freshly chopped pomordorinos, as fresh tomatoes tend to be fairly acidic, and pair the dish with the equally well-suited Ronco del Gnemiz Sauvignon twice reviewed by InterWined in recent weeks. (They make quite a bit of ricotta in Friuli, don’t you know.)

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Ricotta & Sun-dried Tomato Samosas

Ingredients:
(Makes 10)
200g self-raising flour
100g water
½ 250g tub of ricotta cheese
Cracked pepper
½ red onion, finely chopped
5 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
Sunflower or olive oil for frying

To serve:
Caramelised onion chutney
Rocket lettuce (arugula)

Instructions:
1. Place the flour in a large mixing bowl and slowly add the water, stopping regularly to mix the two together before adding more water
2. Once the mixture has formed dough, knead it into a ball, cover with clingfilm and rest it for approximately 30 minutes
3. Mix the ricotta, pepper, onion, and sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl and reserve
4. On a floured surface, roll the dough into a large square
5. Placing an upturned dinner bowl on the rolled out square of dough, cut a circle round the bowl
6. Remove the dough from around the circle and cut the circle in half
7. Using one half-circle at a time, add a dab of water along the edge of one-half of the cut side of the half-circle and fold. With your finger seal the folded side of half-circle
8. Next, stuff the open side of the folded half-circle with a spoonful of the ricotta mixture, dab with water and seal. You should now have a ricotta-stuffed triangle samosa ready for frying.
9. Repeat the process, steps 5-8, until you have run out of dough
10. In a deep frying pan or wok, heat the oil on a high heat
11. Gently add the triangles one at a time into the oil and fry until lightly golden, flipping the triangles midway. You shouldn’t need to fry them for more than 2 minutes
12. Remove the cooked samosas from the hot oil and place on a towel to cool; the samosas should be golden colour, but not crisp or flaky
13. Serve with a dollop of caramelised onion chutney on a bed of fresh rocket lettuce

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