From Street Food To Starter

India has a vibrant culture of street food, road-side stalls cooking up spicy snacks that are cheap and filling, freshly cooked on the spot, catering to those on their way to and from work or college. Street food concentrates on foods that can be cooked quickly and eaten immediately, hence the emphasis on deep frying, which you’ll notice below. Other cooking methods or the charcoal clay oven, which can be kept going at the roadside to grill skewers of marinated meat and chicken. There is a huge variety of different snacks to be found around India, but you don’t have to travel that far to enjoy a taste of these delicious finger foods, as a few of them have found their way to Britain, and been adapted as starters for the menus of our Indian restaurants.

Samosas are one typical street food that most of us are familiar with – deep fried pastry parcels filled with spicy combinations of meat or vegetables – which are usually eaten with tea as a snack in India.

Onion bhajis are am example of street food that has adapted to our tastes and found a firm place on the starter menu in Britain. Deep fried balls of finely julienned potato and onion with spices and curry leaves, they are designed to be a tasty and filling snack to keep you going in the middle of the day, so go easy on them as a starter or you may not have room for all the main dishes you’ve selected!

Puris with a savoury filling or meat or chicken are another deep fried snack from the streets of India. Balls of dough are rolled out and folded around a filling, then fried, or else fried first so they swell up into hollow golden balls, which can then be stuffed with a filling, as you eat them.

Tandoori tikkas are another typical street snack, marinated meat on skewers, cooked in clay charcoal ovens, they are easy finger food and make a quick lunch or snack when you’re pressed for time.

Lassi the popular yoghurt drink is also sold by street vendors to be enjoyed with a flat bread such as the paratha.

The great thing about all these snacks is that they are quick to cook and very satisfying, which makes them ideal starters. You can arrive starving in a restaurant and take the edge off your hunger with a few savoury mouthfuls while your main course takes its time cooking to perfection. Or you can have a whole informal meal of these delicious snack foods at lunch time, ordering a mixed platter of them and not bothering about main dishes at all. Just remember that they are designed to be filling, and aren’t light on the calories, as that what street food is all about, fast, tasty and slightly wicked.

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