Festival is one of my favorite comfort foods. The Jamaican festival is a popular street food that is often eaten with escovitch fish. It features a wide variety of spices and seasonings, depending on the cook. The dough is a mix of corn meal and all-purpose flour deep-fried in oil. As any foodie knows, anything from the deep fryer is automatically heavenly, so try my Simple Jamaican Festival Recipe with the traditional vanilla flavoring or a choice of your own.

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups all-purpose Flour
• ½ cup Cornmeal
• 3 tablespoons Sugar
• 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• ½ teaspoon Salt
• 1 Egg, beaten (optional)
• ½ teaspoon Vanilla
• Cold Water, for kneading the dough
• Oil, for deep-frying the dumplings

Directions

• Take a large mixing bowl and combine the all-purpose flour with the cornmeal.
• Add some sugar along with baking powder and salt. Mix well to combine.
• Beat an egg in this mixture and add vanilla to it. Mix them well together.
• Pour in some water and knead dough till it becomes smooth, while adding small amounts of water as necessary.
• Divide the dough in 6 equal sized pieces and prepare dumplings out of it shaping them lengthwise.
• Place a pan over medium flame and heat some oil in it, sufficient enough to deep-fry the dumplings.
• Once the oil becomes hot enough, put the dumplings in the pan, one after the other, and let them fry over reduced heat.
• Keep stirring them occasionally to ensure they are cooked from all the sides and have turned brown enough. It is ok for them to expand a bit while they are being cooked.
• Serve them hot with a side of your choice.

Note:

In order to prepare a lighter version of these festival-dumplings, reduce the quantity of cornmeal to 3 tablespoons only and also adjust the water for binding the dough.