Christmas Samosas

Christmas is a time of traditions. Cooking is one of those traditions I enjoy. The eating bit I mean, not so much the cooking bit. Usually I just eat what other people (read: my mother) make, but that is impossible this year so she kindly sent me the recipes for my favourites so I could make them myself.
Christmas cooking has always struck me as a BIG Production. I once stayed with a Portuguese lady in Kitimat just before Christmas. Her daughters were coming home for the holidays so she was making the traditional bean salad for them. This required having the beans sit under cold running water for a week. In Kitimat she did this in the laundry sink, but at home in Portugal she explained they would be placed in the local stream. This seemed like a lot of work to me, but the bean salad was delicious.
At my mother's house, cooking was a big deal there too. I mean, there are at least 4 or 5 standard cookies alone that must be made, plus the War Cake, the gumdrop cake, and three or more pies. This is usually all done by the time I breeze in, so it is terribly impressive to see. (and eat)
The War cake was always the most intimidating. I never understood the name. Why, when it has all kinds of fruit and stuff in it, when it was so rich and moist, was it called War cake? I had a vague idea that the name came from rationing, but it seems to me that it is full of stuff that would be rationed. Cherries, dates, candied citrus; these are not local products.

Theory number 1: Studyboy thought it was sent oversees to England (where there was stricter rationing) as a present to the soldiers during the war.
Theory number 2: I thought people saved up rations for months as a treat to be able to make this at Christmas.
Theory number 3: It is so heavy and dense, it could be used as a weapon in a slingshot or a trebuchet.

All good theories, but all wrong apparently. I looked it up. Butter, milk and eggs were rationed during war time, and true War Cake doesn't have any of these things. I'm still not certain how you were meant to get the exotic fruits during naval blockades but there you are. My mother's War Cake recipe does have eggs and a bit of sugar. The sugar, I suppose, could be honey.
Incidentally, War Cake came before the 2 World Wars, I found an internet recipe for Civil War cake that is exactly my mother's recipe. I'm not saying she's that old, just the recipe.
So I was a little intimidated to make it, what with all the ingredients, plus it is huge. I imagined it taking days and days to make. My mother always seemed to make it so early, I thought this was because it took that long to make. You have to chop up all the stuff, you have to measure it out. It's a BIG production.
Turns out it's not. You can buy all the stuff pre-choppped and measured at the bulk barn. Throw it in a pot, boil it 5 minutes, stick it in a snowbank to cool, toss in the flour, throw it in the oven and have a cup of tea. You don't even have to grease the pan.
I'll tell you what is a lot of work though. Samosas. Studyboy and I went to an end of term/holiday pot luck last week, and he had the bright idea that I could make samosas. Here is the irony: War Cake if full of exotic stuff and is dead easy to make, samosas are full of bog standard ingredients like potatoes and frozen peas, and they take hours and hours and hours.
It took an 90 minutes in the morning to cut up and boil the veg, mash the potatoes and let it cool to make the filling. I cleaned up the mess and made lunch. It took an 90 minutes in the afternoon to make and roll out and cut the pastry, and then fill the pastry and clean up the mess. Then I decided to take a tea break before I fried them, so the samosas wouldn't be cold when I took them to the party. This was a bad idea, because as I was about to heat the oil the power went off for an hour. Once it was back on, it took 25 minutes to heat the oil, and that's when I learned you can't pile raw samosas on top of each other because they stick together. Happily, Studyboy had just returned from passing in his last paper and he was drafted to gently peel them apart and repair holes while I took another 35 minutes to fry the stupid things.
Next party, I'm taking War Cake.