Street vendors

In developing nations across South America and Africa, it is common for travellers on buses and trains to be offered snacks by street vendors. Fresh fruits and packaged confectionery are generally the safest option, followed by home made crisps (potato or plantain) and savoury parcels (empanadas or samosas). For those with sturdier stomachs there are 'meat' kebabs.

But in Asia, where space is at a premium, vendors set up market stalls right by the train tracks. How close? This close.

Asian arancini

On Saturday, Rosie Nock told me that 'pictures of white bread' are no good to her. I hope this post will please her more.

I first tried arancini, a type of Italian street food, in 2001. A ball of rice is used to envelope a filling of ragu, peas, mushrooms or mozarella. It is then coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried until golden. They are called arancini because they resemble 'little oranges' (arancia means orange). They make very convenient portable snacks: the Italian version of Cornish pasties, samosas or onigiri (Japanese rice balls).

They probably originated from left over risotto and I too had some rice in the fridge. Unfortunately, it was pilau basmati rice, which posed two issues to address: flavour and texture.

Starting with pilau rice, I pursued South Asian flavours by crushing fenugreek, cumin and fennel seeds with a pestle and mortar. I then added fresh coriander leaves and a red chilli.

Basmati rice is not as sticky as risotto rice or Japanese rice, so it is difficult to make it into balls. To make it stickier, I added some tomato passata, an egg yolk and some gram flour. Gram flour is made from chickpeas and is the flour used for onion bhaji.

Ingredients:
Cooked rice (about 1-2 portions)
1 tsp fenugreek
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 red chilli (de-seeded and finely chopped to produce about 1 tbsp).
1 large handful of coriander leaves, finely chopped
3 tbsp of tomato passata
1 egg yolk
Gram flour
Panko breadcrumbs

Method:

1. Mix the herbs, spices and chilli into the rice.
2. Add the tomato and egg yolk and mix through.
3. Add gram flour gradually until you get a sticky consistency.
4. Form balls no bigger than a golf ball.
5. Coat the balls in breadcrumbs.
6. Deep fry in hot oil or flatten the balls into patties to shallow fry.
7. Fry in batches, drain excess oil with kitchen paper and keep in a warm oven.
8. Serve with chilli sauce or lime and coriander mayonnaise.

Although these originated as convenient street food, they make nice amuse bouche, with a cold beer or a glass of wine, if you make them small enough. We noticed that you could taste the fennel much better once they had cooled down to just above room temperature.

I wonder if there's any left over rice at Soushi, to turn into onigiri-arancini.

Sunday snack: sausage rolls

Yesterday, on Saturday Kitchen, Rick Stein showed his recipe for corned beef hash, served with ketchup. Food snobs may have baulked but ketchup definitely has its place in the kitchen, especially with sausage rolls, as I'm sure you remember from your younger years.

Of course, you can buy them ready made at the supermarket and heat them in the oven, but it is so much more satisfying to make your own. They make a delicious snack with a drink in the evening.

Unless you wish to go the whole hog and make your own sausage meat and pastry, you need only three ingredients: puff pastry, sausage meat and an egg yolk. Dust the worktop and roll the pastry out to 3-4 mm thick. If you can't find sausage meat, use sausages and remove the skin. You can add some herbs, mustard or finely chopped apples. As you can see in the photo above, I was rather generous with the sausage meat - another benefit of making your own. Fold the pastry over the meat and press it closed using some egg yolk and a fork. Trim the ends and cut some vents into the top. Glaze with egg wash and place on a baking tray. I use a silicon liner which is guaranteed non-stick. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees celsius for 15-20 minutes.

Roll the pastry to 3-4 mm thickness

Fold the pastry over the sausage meat and seal

Cut vents into the top and glaze with egg

Bake on a non stick tray for 15-20 minutes until golden brown

Cut into bite size portions and serve with tomato ketchup.

Phileas Fogg

Hector in air balloon suit, 6 weeks old

Here is a photo of Hector wearing a new baby grow. Whenever I see air balloons I have a wave of nostalgia. When I was a young boy in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a brand of snack foods called Phileas Fogg. Like Monster Munch, the brand has been revived to find a new generation of consumers.

I remember them as a special occasion brand because they were priced at a premium and only available in off-licenses and small independent shops, rather than supermarkets. I looked forward to when my parents were having friends round because Phileas Fogg's Mignon Morceaux would often come out!

I had never read Around the World in Eighty Days but the packaging was exciting and mystical to a young boy. It featured a cartoon of Phileas Fogg in an air balloon and a letter from him explaining where in the world he found the snack, and the adventures he had trying to acquire it.

If you remember the original snacks, take the poll on the right to vote for your favourite.

Banana and chocolate loaf

Banana and chocolate loaf

For various reasons, mostly Hector-related, we didn't make it to the supermarket this week. So by the weekend, I faced a Shrove Sunday situation. I had some over-ripe bananas, some flour and some eggs which our friend Chompo had brought us from his hens at home, so I decided to make a chocolate and banana loaf. It took about 10 minutes to prepare and 45 minutes to bake.

Over-ripe bananas

1. Preheat the oven to 180 celsius.

2. In one bowl, mix the following dry ingredients together:

300g flour, sieved
75g caster sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt

3. In the other bowl, mix the wet ingredients together:

3-4 ripe bananas, mashed with a potato masher
2 eggs
50g butter melted in the microwave
50g melted white chocolate

The wet ingredients

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine thoroughly. It should remain pourable, like cake mix, rather than stiff like dough.

5. Butter the inside of a smallish (15-20cm) loaf tin and fill it about 2 cm deep with the mixture.

6. Divide the rest of the mixture between the two bowls. Add 50g of melted dark chocolate to one of them and combine well. You should now have one 'white' mixture and one 'brown' mixture.

7. Add the 'brown' mixture on top of the base layer in the loaf tin and throw in some chocolate chunks which will reset as nuggets once the loaf has cooled. Next, use the remaining 'white' mix to sandwich the dark chocolate layer in the middle. Don't fill the loaf tin right to the top, as it will need room to rise.

Leave some room at the top because it will rise.

8. Put it in the oven. Take it out after 30 minutes and test it by putting a skewer into the centre. If it comes out with mix still on, bake for a further 5-10 minutes.

9.  If the skewer comes out clean, remove the loaf from the tin and put it on a cooling rack.

10. Enjoy a slice at breakfast, with afternoon tea, or at 3am while feeding the baby. 

I didn't leave enough mix for the top sandwich layer!

Canapés and snacks

I warn you now that the title of this blog is misleading. I had wanted to tell you about the canapés at the wedding of our friends Lydia and Timmy.

We took Hector to his first wedding on Saturday. As any new parents know, adapting to life with a new dependent requires advanced logistics. We are roughly following a Gina Ford routine of feeding him every three hours. This meant that by the time we'd fed him at lunchtime, driven to the wedding and had the service, it was time to feed him again. Although he slept through four hymns and Widor's Toccata, by the time we got to the reception after feeding him, we'd missed the canapés and could grab only a few minutes with the bride and groom before the guests were ushered to sit down.

So we set off back to London, ruing the missed canapés. Fellow guests assured me that they were delicious. Instead, Jemma and I stopped at the Sainsbury's by Junction 12 on the M4 and had a meal deal. After much deliberation, Jemma chose a Cheese Ploughmans and a Roast Chicken with Stuffing. Fortunately she also chose my favourite Monster Munch: I find Pickled Onion too eye-wateringly acerbic, Roast Beef too salty but, as Goldilocks might say, Flamin' Hot is just right.

Which are your favourite crisps? Vote in the poll, above on the right.

Beetroot bhaji and flat champagne

It can be quite surreal becoming a father for the first time, especially if you have to leave your wife and new child on the maternity ward later that night. When I got home, I didn't know whether to cry with joy or put the telly on. So I ate a celebratory meal of beetroot bhaji and flat champagne.

We had a glass of champagne each before we went to Cafe 209 on Friday. I tried to save the rest of the bottle by using a vacuvin, but I must have vacuumed the bubbles out because when I came home on Sunday night, the champagne was almost flat. I ate it with beetroot bhaji. I gently fried small cubes of beetroot in cumin and mustard seeds and added it to a batter flavoured with garam masala. The beetroot's rich burgundy looked nice against the yellow of the turmeric but by the time I got home on Sunday, the beetroot had fully infused its regal colour into the batter.

Flat champagne and beetroot bhaji. Surreal.