Spanish Steps - Fact file - Snacks

While Spain's famous tapas are perfect bite-sized snacks, el bocadillo, the filled roll or baguette, is a more substantial offering and comes with an endless variety of fillings.

Favourites include un bocadillo de jamón y queso, a ham and cheese baguette, and other variations on the ham or pork filling, which are very popular with the Spanish. These include el jamón serrano, cured ham, el jamón de York, cooked ham, and el chorizo, spicy sausage. A vegetarian option that is also extremely filling is un bocadillo de tortilla, a potato omelette roll.

Elsewhere in the Spanish world the sandwich faces stiff competition from other snack options sold in restaurants and roadside snack bars. Rather than bread, delicious fillings are held together with pastry, cornmeal and leaves.

Chile for example, favours la empanada al horno, baked pastry, con queso, with cheese, or con pino, with ground beef and seasoning, while in Colombia and Venezuela you can buy una arepa, corn meal cake, served instead of bread or as a snack filled with cheese. You can also try una humita or una hallaca in Venezuela, meat and egg wrapped in corn leaves, or una salteña in Bolivia, a fried cornmeal shell with a meat or vegetable filling.

Mexican snack food has become very popular in fast food joints around the world, and the experience of eating freshly made snacks from a roadside bar takes some beating - try the famous tortilla, the flat corn bread, and its variations: la quesadilla, tortilla with a savoury filling and topped with cheese, or la enchilada, tortilla with a meat and tomato filling and lashings of chilli sauce.

Links

Madrid Food Guide - a gastronomical dictionary

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