From India to South Africa, the samoosa’s journey is a story of migration, adaptation and heritage.
A samoosa may be small enough to eat in three bites, but it carries a remarkably large history.
For many South African families, including mine, that history is personal. It’s the smell of samoosas frying in amma’s (mother’s) kitchen, the filling spiced just right, and a plate of them placed on the table next to sweet, milky tea.
But on World Samosa Day, on 5 September, during South Africa’s Heritage Month, it is worth asking a deceptively simple question: whose samoosa are we actually talking about?
There is no single original samoosa at the beginning of the story. The snack belongs to a much older family of filled pastries whose history stretches through Persia, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.
