Karipap – The Malaysians’ Savory Pastry

Karipap is a traditional Malaysians’ kuih and can be categorized as a savory pastry. The name originated from the English word, Curry-puff. It is not known whether it originally had a different name, or it was inspired by other country food.  There are few other pastries around the world that resemble karipap. One of them is Spain’s pastry – empanada. One distinctive feature that differentiate karipap with all the similar pastries all around the world, is of course the filling. Karipap, as the name suggest, contains curry. The usual karipap has beef curry filling. There also other filling available, in Malaysia – fish with grated coconuts. To suit vegan, we can remove the beef from the curry filling. Signature of karipap is the semi-circle shape with the spiral end. It can be done manually by hand, or can just use a molder.

Vegan Karipap

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Filling

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound potatoes
• 1/2 pound sweet potatoes
• 3 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1 onion
• 3 tbsp. curry powder
• 1 tbsp. chili powder
• ¼ cup water
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 1 cup fresh cilantro
• 12 curry leaves 

Directions

• Dice onion, potatoes, and sweet potatoes.
• Heat oil, add in curry leaves and onion. Sauté onion till it brown then add in potato
• Cook potatoes for about 4 mins.
• Add curry powder and chili powder and stir until the powder is fragrant.
• Add water, salt, and sugar, then turn the heat down and let it cook until potato is softened and until the sauce has thickened and reduced.

Crust

Ingredients

• 300g all purpose flour
• ½ tsp. salt
• 100g margarine
• 120ml water
• Oil for deep frying

Directions

• Combine flour, margarine, salt and water in a bowl. Knead to form soft non-sticky dough.
• Let the dough rest for 15 minutes.
• Make the dough into smaller ones – 13g (0.028 pounds) each.
• Then roll out each of it into a 10cm (4 inch) circle.
• Put the filling in the middle, then pinch the edges to seal.
• Deep fry in medium hot oil until golden brown(or healthier option bake at 425 Fahrenheit until golden brown).