International Engineering Ambassadors
Insight into the life & course of international students.

Monday 8 May 2017

A Taste of The World at the University of Sheffield

Written By: Rishi Parwani

Every year the International Students’ Committee puts on a myriad of spectacular events ranging from the International Cultural Evening, World Week and most recently; The World Food Festival. This year, 12 societies took part and stepped up to showcase their dishes to an audience of hungry students, myself included. World Food Fest is one of my favourite events by the ISC because as I’m sure you may have gathered by now from my blog posts, I’m a massive foodie!
How the World Food Festival works is quite simple. The event takes place over a two-day period and all the participating societies are in competition with each other to win us over with their national delicacies. So I visited on the Saturday and the participating societies on the day were:
  • Malaysian Society
  • Romanian Society
  • Hungarian Society
  • Arab Society
  • Filipino Society
  • Sri Lankan Society
  • Sheffield Market Society
Upon arrival at the Octagon Centre where the event was taking place, I was stumped because it’s been a long time since I’ve been presented with so many options for a meal. Such is life for a student, don’t you think? I spent the first 15 minutes walking around getting an idea of what I should eat which wasn’t an easy feat at all.
After a brainstorming session consisting of mental pros-and-cons lists (just kidding, I’m not crazy), I finally decided to have a main course meal from the Sri Lankan Society. Our friends from Sri Lanka were serving Fried Rice with Prawn Curry which was spectacular. I was so lost in the bursting flavours of this dish that I only remembered to get a picture of it after I had finished eating all the prawns.
My craving for dessert lead me to the Filipino Society, who were serving a Mango Float cake for dessert. This was essentially a cake consisting of a sweet mango cream with crushed digestive biscuits and I can’t emphasise how good it was. It was genuinely my favourite dish from the entire event and I’m definitely going to be spamming the Filipino Society Facebook page for their recipe! My photos definitely don’t do it justice but you’ll just have to trust me on this one.
Still craving for more, I paid a visit to the Arab Society because having grown up in the Middle East, I absolutely love eating Arabic food. I was over-the-moon to discover that they were saying Um-Ali, a traditional Arabian dessert that combines the creaminess of bread pudding and cinnamon nut stuffing of baklava. Its warm and soft texture transported me back home. Kudos to Arab Society!
By this point I was absolutely stuffed to eat more from the other societies but both Romanian and Hungarian society had some excellent dishes on offer, not to mention their desserts which looked incredible.

I rounded off my food-eating marathon with a smoothie from the smoothie-stall run by the Sheffield Market Society, a brand new society that is in contact with local markets and sources fresh ingredients. There was a huge variety of smoothies to choose from however after the amount of food I had just consumed, I decided to go down a healthier alley and tried the banana smoothie which was so refreshing.
So there you have it. The amalgamation of cultures and cuisine at the Food Festival just supports how much I love studying here in Sheffield. The international exposure at this university is second-to-none and it just goes to show that an engineering degree at this university is so much more than you can ever imagine. A massive thank you to the ISC for pulling off such a fantastic event!

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