I hope some of you can help me... I need to put together instructions for folding samosa wrappers and I need to know if the instructions are easy to follow. Could someone please try to follow these with a piece of paper of the appropriate size and tell me if it worked for you? Thanks.

Most samosa wrappers that you can buy in a store are roughly 3"x9" so that is the size I have used here. Sometimes 4"x12" can be found too - i.e. length=3x width seems to work best. I started the instructions thinking I'd need to label corners etc. A, B, C,.... but I don't think that is really necessary and may just confuse the issue so I'll leave out references to letters for now.

Step 1 Start with a sheet of 3"x9" wonton/samosa wrapper pastry (or paper in this test exercise :-) The pastry is a stack of layers so you have to carefully peel off a single sheet. Before starting the filling process, you also need to make a flour and water 'glue' paste that is thick but runny. Every time you make a fold, you 'glue' it by swiping some of the paste on the pastry where the fold happens and press the layers together when you fold. This seals the layers, particulaly for corners, to prevent too much oil leaking in during the deep frying.

(Ignore the letters for now... The lines indicate where the folds will be but you don't have to worry about those either...) I have colored the edges of the underside of the paper, as you will see in later pictures, to help make some things more evident in the photographs.)

{{gwi:186944}}

Step 2 find the middle of the sheet by folding it in half, then open it out again. Fold the right hand side up so it crosses the upper edge about 1/3 (3" in this case) from the left side.

{{gwi:186946}}

Step 3 Fold (and 'glue') the left side over so the bottom edge aligns with the rights side of the previous fold. You should end up with a triangular bottom.

{{gwi:186947}}

Step 4 Turn it over and you should find that you have a triangular pocket with two flaps behind it. You fill the pocket with the samosa filling, being careful not to over-stuff it.

{{gwi:186948}}

Step 5 Fold the front flap down (remembering to 'glue the corner if you are doing this for real with pastry....)

{{gwi:186949}}

and fold and glue to the back the small corner

{{gwi:186950}}

Step 6 Repeat with the second flap.

{{gwi:186951}}
{{gwi:186952}}

Ta-Da! You should have a nice neat triangle....

View of the back:

{{gwi:186953}}

Of course, with actual pastry, stuffing to fill out the pocket, and eye-balling where the 1/3 point is, things are never quite so neatly symetrical but it still comes out as a fairly neat triangle most times.

{{gwi:186954}}
{{gwi:186955}}

You can use the same technique for making any sort of filled pastry.

So... clear as mud, right? :-) Could you follow it? Did you try it; did it work?