Kachori

Kachori is a round, flaky pastry filled with spiced lentils and deep-fried until it puffs hollow and crisp. It's India's round cousin to the triangular samosa, and the two are genuinely different pastries rather than the same snack in a different shape — a different, shorter and flakier dough, a different filling, and a different way the finished shell behaves when bitten into.

What it really is

A dough enriched with a generous amount of fat worked in — shorter and flakier than a samosa's firmer, plainer dough — wraps around a filling of split moong or urad dal, cooked down with asafoetida, fennel and cumin into a dry, crumbly spiced mixture, quite unlike a samosa's usually wetter potato-and-pea filling. Sealed into a round parcel and deep-fried slowly over lower heat, the pastry puffs up with a distinct hollow pocket inside, the shell turning flaky and crisp rather than the samosa's firmer, denser crust. This article describes the lentil-filled khasta (dal) kachori; pyaaz (onion) kachori and mawa (sweet) kachori are different preparations.

Kachori is usually round and puffed where samosa is triangular and dense. Not every kachori is equally hollow, though: shapes, doughs and fillings vary from region to region and cook to cook, and the dry lentil filling is just one of them.

How it's served

• Hot or at room temperature, split open and filled further with chutney, yoghurt or a spiced potato curry.
• With tamarind or mint chutney for dipping, if eaten plain.
• As a snack or light breakfast, common at street stalls and tea shops.

How to write it on the menu

• Flag the wheat.
• It's vegetarian, and vegan only if made without ghee; ghee in the dough is common, and those versions contain milk.
• Say if it's served plain or split and filled further, since the two are different portions and orders.