The World's Best Street Food - At Home

Lonely Planet - the world's best street food 

where to find it & how to make it

 

This is a tantalising book with an introduction by Tom Parker Bowles and a host of contributing authors who have all traveled, sampled and recreated street food from all around the world.

For our Street Food Supper Club, we chose some dishes we had never eaten (or indeed heard of in some cases). 

First Course

Bsarra (Fez, Morocco)

A thick soup made from fava beans, slowly cooked with garlic, cumin and paprika.

Mushed up broad beans with garlic, some cumin for flavour and LOTS of paprika.

Bsarra

Second Course

Bamboo Rice (Taiwan)

Steamed rice (usually wrapped in bamboo) with shiitake mushrooms, dried shrimp, minced pork and soy sauce.

We had no individual rice pots, instead a large covered wok to steam cook, which gave us subtle flavours that matched the rest of the meal surprisingly well.

Cevapcici (Croatia)

Grilled garlicky skinless sausages accompanied by diced onions and ajvar (red pepper and augerbine relish) and sour cream.

Could not pronounce or remember the name of the dish until the very end of the night, but it was delicious, despite being pattie-shaped rather than sausage.

Red Red (Ghana)

Hot, sweet and spicy black-eyed peas paired with fried plantains, topped with zomi (red palm oil) and gari (fermented dried cassava powder).

This was my favourite dish of the evening I think, using the fried plantain to scoop up the spicy peas - recognising not an Asian spice, but an African one which was a first for me.

Black-eyed Pead. Plantain, Cecapcici, and Ajvar

Third Course

Phat Kaphrao (Thailand)

Spicy pork served with a sweet fish sauce and holy basil, served over streamed rice.
We all love a thai curry, but this dish had flavour and depth that, especially with the fish sauce drizzled over the rice, just oozed spice and texture.

Takoyaki (Osaka, Japan)

Tender chunks of octopus encased in a crisp puffy wheat batter, dusted with seaweed and bonito flakes, and doused with takoyaki sauce.
Japanese dumplings - we made it a large pancake due to lack of specialised equipment, but it tasted just great!

By this stage, we had consumed so much delicious food, and far too much wine, so we may have forgotten to take photos... those octopus dumplings were certainly memorable in their own way.

Atmospheric Photography: Shani
Equipment and Venue: Silke
Chief Chopper: Christoph