Bamba — Palestine

This snack is a puffed corn piece flavored with peanut, a shape and taste that became widely known through industrial production in Israel starting in the 1960s, where a corn-and-peanut puff of this kind was said to make up a large share of the local snack market. Similar peanut-flavored corn puffs are made under different names by other manufacturers in the region and beyond, each with its own shape and coating. In Palestine, a snack of this type is a common sight on the shelves of small grocery shops and corner stores, bought mostly by children and eaten straight from the bag as an everyday treat rather than prepared for an occasion. It sits alongside other packaged puffed and fried snacks that circulate throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Made at home, the puffs start as a thin corn batter that is piped in short lengths directly into hot oil, where the moisture in the batter turns to steam and puffs each piece as it fries to a light golden color. Once drained, the warm puffs are tossed in gently warmed peanut butter so a thin coating clings to the ridged surface, then dusted with a little icing sugar and salt while the coating is still soft enough to hold it. What sets this snack apart from other fried corn puffs is the peanut coating applied at the end rather than mixed into the dough, which keeps the inside light and airy while the outside carries the nutty, slightly sweet flavor associated with the shop-bought product. The balance of sugar and salt in the coating, and how thickly it is applied, is what varies most between the many peanut-corn puffs sold under different names across the region.