Spotlight on: Street Foods

It’s a craze that’s been sweeping our country faster than you can say falafel. While our nation will always love good quality hot dogs and burgers, the new breed of street food is for anyone with a taste for adventure. From Moroccan flatbreads to South Indian samosas, from Thai spring rolls to pulled pork from America’s Deep South, the street food you’ll find at Stroud Farmers’ Market is the ultimate in authenticity.

Here are the top 6 street food stalls you mustn’t miss this autumn:

Saira’s South Asian Savouries: created by Saira Banu

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This is traditional South Asian street food with a twist. Originally from Bangladesh, Saira uses the influences of her home country as well as Pakistan and India to give her food its distinct flavour, combining Asian spices with ingredients found at Stroud Farmers’ Market. Appetisers include lamb and vegetable samosas, dahl puri, spring rolls, spinach pakoras and onion bhajis. For her curries, Saira has experimented using British produce and her spinach and rhubarb curry, served with chana dahl, is a sell-out every week. Other curries include aubergine and potato, mixed vegetable and lentil and minced lamb, pea and potato.  All the curries are gluten free and gluten free appetisers are clearly marked.

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This family-run catering business, headed by Niang Deethwa, serves up authentic Thai street food using recipes passed down from generation to generation. With the help of her four daughters, Niang creates her Thai street foods from locally sourced ingredients, using the finest herbs and spices. You’ll find chicken satay, vegetable spring rolls and spicy pork cakes, as well as delicious curries (green, yellow, Panang) served with homemade sauces, rice or noodles every Saturday at Stroud Farmers’ Market and Gloucester every Friday. All curries are wheat and gluten free and vegetarian and vegan dishes are available. Dishes are also suitable for home freezing, so come and stock up ready for the next time you fancy a take-away!

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Marrakesh’s Djemaa el-Fna square is famous for its street food with hundreds of stalls setting up every evening to sell their freshly-cooked wares. Za'Za brings you a taste of Morocco every Saturday at our Stroud market, every Friday at Gloucester and every Sunday at Swindon Outlet, with fantastic falafels, with fantastic falafels, served up with crunchy, vibrant salads, all delicately wrapped in Moroccan-style flat breads. Each week, there is a selection of different flavoured falafels to try, all gluten-free and suitable for vegans. Home-made sauces to drizzle onto your flatbread include harissa, amba (mango and turmeric), coriander pistou and, of course, hummus. Also available are vegan tagine dishes served with couscous.

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These organic burgers and hot dogs are proof that the UK also has an excellent tradition in street food. The Wilson family make their sausages and pork burgers using their own Gloucester Old Spot pigs and the classic burgers and steaks are from their own herd of Aberdeen Angus cows. Also available are Suffolk Lamb burgers. The meat is served up by son, Albert, in wholesome organic rolls from Stroud’s Sunshine Health Shop with an assortment of home-prepared salads and relishes from Stroud-based Kitchen Garden Preserves. New for autumn is a Gloucester Old Spot pulled pork roll, rubbed in paprika, cayenne and other delicious spices following a Hairy Bikers’ recipe, then slow cooked for over eight hours to give a melt in the mouth taste sensation – we can’t wait! 

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A British BBQ done properly is a joyous thing and that’s what Rebecca Jones and her niece, Florence Smith, manage every Saturday at Stroud Farmers’ Market and every Sunday at Swindon Outlet Farmers’ Market. Their dry-cured, free-range bacon butties are just the thing for an early start as are their Great Taste Gold award-winning breakfast sausage hot dogs, made from tasty rare breed Tamworth Sows. The range of gourmet burgers is equally mouth-watering: Jalapeno Beef, Pork & Apple, the Great Taste Gold award-winning Lamb & Mint, Tomato, Garlic & Beef or just plain old Classic. The meat is served in bread from stallholder La Parisienne, with a range of home-made chutneys and mustards and seasonal salads from the fruit and veg stallholders. Joints of meat are also available to buy and look out for their hog roast too, which makes an occasional appearance!

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As the weather cools, what could be better than enjoying the market while slurping from a hot cup of freshly made soup? That’s the thinking behind About Soup, a range of homemade, seasonal soups created by Christopher Tarry. Chris, who used to run a soup and salad bar in Bristol, uses seasonal ingredients available at the market to produce deliciously flavoured soups including roast beetroot, butternut squash with sage, Moroccan red lentil, courgette and lemon, and pea and mint. All soups are gluten free, mostly vegetarian, and come with freshly-baked baguettes from stallholder La Parisienne. Takeaway salads are also available until the end of October and include red cabbage slaw, waldorf salad with lentils (instead of walnuts) and roasted vegetable couscous with harissa.