There is nothing better than biting into a delicious crunchy golden samosa after a day of fasting, but there are several steps that go into making samosas and it can be a tiring and time consuming process. The Ayub family has turned this very tedious process into a festive family reunion.
For the past five years the Ayub family has been having the pre-Ramadan Samosa Fests. Women in their family sit around, enjoy each others company and make perfect triangular shaped samosas. The first Samosa Fest was born when family members began talking at an iftaar.
“We decided that everyone makes samosas, so we should get together and make them together,” explained Humaira Ayub, one of the hosts of Samosa Fest.
The women bring their own batch of keema from home and then add the onions and other “masala” when they get to Samosa Fest. Then everyone helps to complete one batch (5 pounds makes approximately 150 samosas) for the family member, This takes about 45 minutes, said Ayub.
“When it comes to preparing the samosas the women form an assembly line. The younger girls of the family usually do the sticking of the samosas and the putting them into ziplock bags, while the more experienced wrap the samosas,” said Ayub.
Family members have traveled several hours for this annual event and see it as a way to spend quality time and get into the festive Ramadan spirit. One year the entire family went to Boston, they made Samosas in the afternoon and then after that they went on a duck tour.
While the women do the Samosa assembling the guys are usually throwing around a football and the event usually concludes with a big family dinner. Each year, a different family volunteers to host Samosa Fest. The host for the first Samosa Fest, Sharmeen Khan, had custom Samosa Fest aprons made for all the guest.
” I wanted to give everyone a party favor and aprons seem to suit the event,” said Khan.
She also added that Samosa Fest is about creating traditions, ” It’s just fun! It’s also an amazing way to pass on a tradition and skill. Since we’ve been doing this, all of us including the girls are great at making samosas.”
Does your family have any Ramadan traditions? We would love to hear about your family’s traditons!
How cute! M’A.
that is really different and cool, and love how its around Ramadan, perfect way to get in the Ramadan spirit!
Great story! Makes me want to eat samosas with my friends and family. Ramadan Mubarak!
This is great. We have a putto ( native dish) making tradition in our family as well. Good times!
That’s awesome! What a great way to get into the ramadaan spirit…and making it fun for the whole family, especially here in north america away from our homelands where religious and cultural occasions are celebrated without a second thought:)
One of my friends Andreas did not like samosa till he tried ours which he found delicious. actually his samosa was a dictator. LOL.
wow thats really cool! i wish we did that with mai family!
[...] SamosaFest: a family tradition [...]
awesome! I’m from India, but I live in the U.S. My family gets together to do these kinda of things all the time..but mashaAllah you have a lot more women working as I see in that picture up there! My mom makes really good samosas, so I learned from her and taught my aunts…it was really fun making them together! In Ramadan, we also make different mithai and stuff!