When we heard about World Food Week (24th to 30th June), we knew this was one blog we simply had to write.
After all, creating amazing dishes from around the world is our bread and butter, or in our case naan and ghee!
Apparently, over the course of our lifetime, us Brits spend £30,000 on curry alone. We take this figure with a pinch of curry powder, but it’s fair to say the Indian food we make, and which is bought at UK supermarkets easily dwarfs that figure.
Whether it’s onion bhaji, chicken pakora, chicken tikka samosas, Indian kachori, keema naan bites, or vegetable samosas, the chances are you have eaten something which starts life in our development kitchen.
In fact, we make more than 1 million bhajis a week – that’s the equivalent of the weight of 75 adult Indian elephants.
If you prefer Chinese, do you know it’s now the third most popular cuisine in the UK when eating out, second only to British and Italian. Yes, believe it or not, it’s more popular than Indian food.
That’s fine though because we make just as much oriental food than Indian. Each year we make spring rolls, along with wontons, char sui pork buns, chicken katsu, crispy chilli beef, sweet chilli chicken, lemon chicken and ribs, to name just a few.
How about Mediterranean food? Yes, we do that too. Beetroot falafel, goats cheese and caramelised onion parcels, Moroccan lamb parcels are just a few of our creations. Do you know that one translation of falafel is ‘tasty little thing’, well we make 10 tasty varieties of falafel.
Tex-Mex is another type of food we have fallen for as a nation. At SK we fuse more traditional Mexican flavours such as jalapeno, chipotle and lime with American specialties such as smoked pulled meats and BBQ to make fantastic taste combinations. This includes beef burrito, breaded cheese, chicken enchiladas, dirty fries and mac and cheese bites.
So, that’s why we’re excited about World Food Week, and we’re already experimenting with new dishes from other far flung places, so watch this space….
In the meantime, here’s this week’s recipe:
Beetroot falafel
Ingredients :
• Half a tin of drained chickpeas
• 1 x diced onion
• 1 x tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 x pack of cooked beetroot
• 2 x cloves of garlic
• 1x inch (2.5cm) fresh ginger
• Juice of ½ a lemon
• 1 x tbsp tomato paste
• A small handful of coriander
• Small handful of parsley
• 60g plain flour
• 1 x tbsp of shop bought caramelised onion chutney
• 1 x tsp ground cumin
• 1 x tsp salt
• ½ tsp ground coriander
• 3 x tbsp natural breadcrumbs (shop bought is fine)
Method:
1. Place all ingredients in to a food processor and blend until a chunky paste is formed add more breadcrumbs or flour if mixture is too wet.
2. Form the mixture into small ball shapes roughly 4cm in diameter. These can be fried or baked. Fry in oil until golden at a temp of 180C. Alternatively bake in a preheat oven (180oC) for 12-15 mins.
3. Enjoy with hummus and a light salad.
About Sean Flint
Development & Innovation Chef of SK Foods.
Your food. Our Passion.
