Category: stuff

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Deep Fried Combo

Sometimes I wish pubs that serve food had a little more imagination.

Look at this combo starter for sharing.

Most of the stuff on that platter is deep fried!

I guess that is what most people want from a combo starter, personally I would have liked them to use fresh ingredients rather than processed stuff out of the freezer that is then thrown into the deep fat fryer. I know there’s some salad and at the far end is some chicken and garlic bread, but why not take a leaf out of the Spanish tapas cookbook or a Greek meze cookbook and be more creative.

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Italian sausage and red wine tortelloni

Tried the Italian sausage and red wine tortelloni from Morrisons.

After cooking it in a pan of boiling water for about two minutes I drained the pasta and added a couple of spoonfuls of creme fraché. I served the pasta with some freshly grated parmesan and freshly ground black pepper.

Though the texture was good, I did feel that the pasta lacked any distinctive flavour. I certainly couldn’t taste any red wine in the pasta filling and the sausage was not very apparent in the filling. Overall I was disappointed with the pasta.

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Sausages

I cooked some Sainsury’s Taste the Difference Ultimate outdoor reared pork sausages.

They were quite nice, meaty, not too salty and didn’t go bang!

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Duck

I recently had duck at a hotel restaurant.

Slightly overcooked and slice, it was served on a bed or oriental vegetables in a overpowering and salty oyster sauce. Bizarrely it was served with deep fried potato balls rather than rice, which would have been my preference.

I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

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Wooden Spoons

Made me smile.

Gareth Richards: “Wooden spoons are great. You can either use them to prepare food. Or, if you can’t be bothered with that, just write a number on one and walk into a pub…”

From BBC.

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Curry

Too often when I have curry it looks like this!

A brown dish made of some meat with a brown curry flavoured sauce?

As though curry is a single flavour in its own right!

Supermarket curries, though not much better, at least realise that there is more than one kind of curry.

Personally I much prefer to make my own curries rather than have something like you see above.

What about you?

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Jamie Oliver Italian Sausages

If you are a regular reader of the blog you will know that I am a bit of a fan of Jamie Oliver. However I have been avoiding buying any Jamie Oliver products as I was concerned that my expectations would not be met.

However having put off buying anything I saw in my local supermarket some Jamie Oliver Italian style sausages. Coarse pork with red wine, prosciutto and herbs. They sounded and looked great.

After watching Jamie’s Great Italian Escape I was hoping that he would have bought what he learnt into this range of products.

I pan fried them, they browned and cooked fine.

I served them with some pasta and a green salad.

So what did I think?

Well…

They were certainly meaty, a great texture.

However I was disappointed with the flavour. It wasn’t sausage enough and it wasn’t Italian enough either. The flavours needed to be stronger in my opinion.

The key question is will I buy them again?

Sorry no.

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No more blue ice cream

There is something about blue food (well here in the UK anyhow) that means it doesn’t really appeal.

There never use to be blue smarties before someone noticed that the Germans had blue smarties!

Druckers, the coffee chain, use to sell a variety of Italian ice creams, one of which was a blue banana flavoured ice cream.

Why it was blue, I do not know, but blue it was.

Now I don’t like blue ice cream, but someone in my house does, he is three! He has been asking for it!

It appears after asking that Druckers won’t be getting anymore in. I did try Patisserie Valerie, both it and Druckers are owned by the same parent company, and after a web search I did find that at one time, Patisserie Valerie also sold blue ice cream. It now appears like Druckers that they don’t sell it anymore!

So no ice cream that is the colour blue. What am I to do?

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Tunnocks

Every so often, usually about once a year, I have a craving for a Tunnocks chocolate covered caramel wafer biscuit.

Available in packs of four from most supermarkets, unlike a lot of other things I crave, I am never disappointed.

I eat the four wafer biscuits, if I am good over a week, or if I am silly on one evening!

I do enjoy them, but then that is that. No more for another year.