food, reviews and of course coffee
Fancying a salad for lunch I found this Mozzarella, Tomato & Pesto Salad with Rocket & Pine Nuts in Sainsbury’s.
It was quite nice. The pesto wasn’t overpowering, there was enough to cover the pasta and there were ample pine nuts too. The pasta was the right texture, the sunblush tomatoes were nice and the mozzarella was fine.
Overall it was a nice packaged salad and certainly much nicer than a sandwich.
When I bought my paella the other day, it was part of a deal, buy two meals from the range for £5. The other dish I got was one with king prawns and orzo pasta.
King prawns with orzo pasta, roasted red onion, red and yellow peppers and courgettes, cherry tomatoes, baby leaf spinach and a tomato dressing.
I thought this was a much nicer meal than the paella. It did taste fresh and the addition of the fresh tomato sauce worked well. If I was to change one aspect of the dish, that would be the prawns, as they were already cooked, heating them up with the rest of the dish did “ruin” them. Though all the ingredients were cooked and just needed reheating, some ingredients do better than others when reheated. Prawns shrink and become chewy. If I was got get this meal again, I would probably remove the prawns before reheating and then add them at the end.
Of course the other option is to make this dish from scratch (always challenging when at work, but easier to do at home) I would use raw prawns rather than cooked ones.
I did enjoy this dish, it tasted fresher compared to other meals from Sainsbury’s however with a standard price of £3.70 I think it is quite expensive, good value as part of the deal, less so on its own.
Sainsbury’s have another one of those bargains you can’t afford to miss….
Yesterday I needed something quick for lunch and as I was passing Sainsbury’s I popped in thinking I would get a salad, in the end I bought a paella to bung into the microwave at work.
Paprika and garlic chicken and king prawns with savoury arborio rice, red pepper and peas sprinkled with chorizo.
I kind of knew what I was expecting having bought paella from Sainsbury’s before.
This was very similar to that experience, but had more flavour than that version. It was nowhere near what I know I can create in the kitchen, but for a quick lunch it was pretty nice.
After the last excellent offer in my local Sainsburys I was pleased to see another excellent offer….
I did see a similar ‘bargain” in Tesco, but too many staff around to take a photograph. Once got “told off” in Cabot Circus for taking photographs, so am always a little careful in retail outlets.
Generally when we go on holiday we go self-catering, mainly as it gives us the option to eat when and where we want to. The problem with self-catering is that you don’t always get a decent kitchen and nearly always the equipment leaves a lot to be desired. I want to cook a nice meal, what usually happens is that I get so frustrated with the lack of space, lack of decent pans, blunt knives and rubbish cookers that I get all annoyed.
On a recent holiday after struggling to cook a simple pasta dish in the kitchen in our self-catering accommodation I was so fed up that when I was in the local Sainsburys I decided to purchase a processed meal and heat it up in the oven. To be honest I was quite surprised by how nice it was. Yes if you got all the ingredients yourself and cooked from fresh, yes it would be much nicer, but in the assumption that you have useless cooking facilities, this was certainly much easier.
We had the Roasted Pork Belly with slow cooked roast potatoes and red onions, served with a tangy apple and cider sauce.
If you are regular reader of this blog, then you will know I have a fondness for pork belly so as a result I know what it can be like and what it should be like. The dish is quite simple to “cook” place in a pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes. No slicing, no dicing and no preparation.
So what was it like?
It was rather quite nice. The combination of pork belly and potatoes worked well, the pork was quite tender and tasty, though I could tell it had been cooked and then heated up. It could have done with some more onions, whilst the potatoes were a little too salty for my tastes. The cider sauce was really nice, this did need to be heated up separately, but easily done in the provided microwave. Both myself and my wife enjoyed eating it and she said it was the best meal we had on that holiday, though to be honest it didn’t have a lot of competition!
A little secret, we had it again a few weeks later when we were back home, and then I did have some decent cooking facilities…
I do like risotto and have in the past made a very nice lemon and rocket risotto.
Sainsburys do sell plain risotto rice, but they also sell a Mediterranean Style Vegetable Risotto Kit. At £2.99 I didn’t think it was value for money, however I did find it on offer recently for just £1.49, so I thought I would give it a try. It comprises arborio rice and dried vegetables.
It’s very simple to cook, virtually no preparation and then cook in the pan with stock.
It wasn’t that bad, quick and easy to cook and quite tasty.
However if it was £2.99 then no I wouldn’t buy it, for that sort of money I would prefer to buy the raw ingredients and make it from scratch. The preparation saved isn’t huge and fresh vegetables would certainly make a difference to flavour and the final dish.
I served mine with some grilled chicken.
Having used cooking chorizo from Tesco, Marks and Spencers and Sainsbury, I much prefer using the chorizo from Tesco or Marks and Spencers.
The main issue I have with the Sainsbury’s chorizo is that it comes in little sausages. From the other two stores, you get four large chorizo sausages, whereas from Sainsbury you get twelve small sausages, though from a weight perspective you get roughly the same amount of sausage.
So for the majority of dishes I use chorizo in, the small sausages are a bit annoying to slice. They also seem to be a little more salty than the other two.
However I suspect if you cooked them whole with red wine, then it would a really nice chorizo frito al vino.
I mentioned last week how I was disappointed with the fish and chips I had had at the Sainsbury’s Café. One of the reasons I do go there (as well as convenience) is that you can be surprised.
Earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised with a meal I had at the café.
It was chargrilled tuna on a bed of steamed vegetables with a tomato sauce. It was certainly one of the best meals I have ever had in the Sainsbury’s Café.
The vegetables were not over cooked and still had some crunch. The tomato sauce was certainly better than most I have had, even the tuna was very nice, if a little overcooked.
A pity it was a special and not a regular item on the menu.
