Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Salted Caramel

Saying "yes" to the offer of sampling the chocolate salted caramel ice cream from Häagen-Dazs was pretty obvious. I think it's been clear over the years that I really like Häagen-Dazs as a brand and I really like ice cream under most circumstances.

I said "yes" and a couple of vouchers arrived in the post a day or so later. Getting to the shops took a bit longer. It meant I totally missed National Chocolate Week, which was the whole point of them offering me the product to try. But as I know that for many people every week is chocolate week I don't feel too bad about that time slip.

So I knew I really liked their regular salted caramel ice cream and I thought I'd better get a tub of that as well as the chocolate to do a side by side comparison. Definitely for research purposes. And not at all just for me because it is delicious. I also picked up a tub of vanilla for Paul. His choice. I'm generous like that.

"Chocolate ice cream with a decadent salted caramel swirl and salted caramel brittle". The chocolate wasn't too sweet, which I really liked. The salted caramel had enough salt to stand up against the chocolate - I had wondered about that, because chocolate can be such a brute - although I thought the chunky bits of caramel were more chewy than brittle. It's very good, and I am sure lovers of grown up chocolate flavours will absolutely fall for it, but it's not quite enough to make chocolate my first choice of ice cream flavour. Not in a world with salted caramel, and dulce de leche, and macadamia nut brittle, and pralines and cream.

Dr Oetker Ristorante Calzone

Yes, I like cooking. I cook four or five nights a week. I cook even if I'm eating alone. It's more of a pleasure than a chore (particularly since I have a dishwasher...). But we always, always have a couple of pizzas in the freezer. Pizza is Paul's comfort food. It fits, for him, into some weird mental category where the calories don't count, he considers it low-carb and no matter how queasy he is feeling pizza makes him feel better.

Unfortunately, the pizza places that deliver to us are all pretty awful and overpriced. We were delighted, a few months ago, to discover a new one. The first pizzas we had from there were delicious, some of the best we've had in years. Our second order was patchy. Our third was so undercooked it was almost raw and made us both sick. And I've noticed they have stopped delivering.

So we'd rather stick with frozen pizzas, where at least we know they are cooked all the way through. I was very pleased to accept a couple of vouchers to try Dr Oetker Ristorante Pizza Calzone.

First things first, the instructions say to place the frozen calzone directly onto the rack in a preheated oven. Now, I always do that with other frozen pizzas, but I just wasn't 100% convinced of the structural integrity of the dough envelope, so I decided to be cautious and put it straight onto the rack, but with a paper-lined tray on the shelf underneath it. Which was a good move, as I watched a long drip of cheese ooze down.

As this sort of folded pastry tends to be lava-hot inside, I was quite happy to take a few pictures before I ate it. I know from past experience that you can't really taste anything with a blistered palate. The aroma when I first cut into it was very good - a savoury waft of yeast and herbs.

To me, this tasted of my childhood. I don't know if we actually ate French tinned champignons that often, but that slightly pickled mushroom taste took me straight back there. The Edam cheese is mild and pleasantly gooey, the salami nicely meaty, the crust crunchy. There could/should have been more cheese, as quite a lot of it dripped out and was lost, though. It doesn't taste particularly Italian; it's a very Teutonic approach to a pizza, but it was an enjoyable solo meal.

The biggest problem I can see with us adding these calzones to our regular pizza supply is the cooking time. Because they are folded they take more than twice as long to bake as an ordinary frozen pizza. If it's going to take half an hour to bake I'm probably more likely to go up the road for a kebab. But other people are more patient than I am.

One other concern I had was over the use of palm oil, but I read the Dr Oetker supplier report to the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil. Dr Oetker has been in conversion to sustainable palm oil suppliers since 2011, and world wide conversion is scheduled for this year.  Which is very pleasing for those of us who like orang utans as much as we like pizza.

Disclaimer: In the words of Simply Red "If you don't know me by now, you will never never never know me". I was given vouchers for Dr Oetker pizza products. No other payment was offered, no promises were made. My opinions are my own.

Unearthed Christmas

The view from The Globe

I mainly just potter along, posting what I feel like, when I feel like it and not really bothering too much about how I "grow my brand" or any of that serious blogger business. Which puts me in a position to be a bit smug when something like the tawdry #BloggerBlackmail hits social media.

But of course the week that unedifying hashtag blew up, I had a lovely invitation to do serious blogger business at a brand event. So obviously when I arrived at the Globe for the Unearthed Christmas Press Show I demanded £100 worth of macarons. They shoved a cocktail in my hand and told me to stuff my face with sausage. Fair enough. That sort of free and open communication prevents all sorts of misunderstanding.

Iberico meat platter

Unearthed have very kindly invited me to several events over the years, but this is the first one I've been able to attend. It was lovely putting a face to the twitter account! I am, however, very familiar with many of their products, because Paul has a two-salami a day charcuterie habit and Ocado often has the Unearthed range on discount. They hit a very pleasing balance of quality and accessible pricing which I like and often have delicious and unusual products perfect for savoury snackers like us. I'm still mourning the loss of the smoked semi-dried tomatoes that they ran as a temporary line earlier this year.

Brussels sprout salad. Delicious. Really.

While I love smallgoods, the salads were particularly inspiring. I'm a huge fan of fancying up a salad by chucking on deli items, but these were on another level: feta, artichoke and brussels sprout, and freekeh, tomato and smoked cranberry. The cocktail offered in lieu of macaron was a lovely combination of Makers Mark bourbon, strawberry purée, raspberry liqueur and lime juice which packed a punch but I don't think it addled my palate. So when I tell you that the brussels sprout salad was really delicious, you can trust me. Really. But follow the links to the recipes and see for yourself.

Freekeh, roasted tomato, olives and smoked cranberry salad

As well as trying the salads, I tasted a few of the new lines that are being introduced for Christmas. They are entering into "gifting" (horrible word) for the first time, with some snazzy decorative kilner jars of olives (the citrus Nocellara with garlic were particularly good) and glass beer mugs of snacking chorizo or fuet. Fortunately Kavey recently mentioned on Facebook that she had made fuet so I was able to assume a knowledgeable air on the subject. I think it is safe to say Paul is absolutely going to love those fuets and in a couple of months I will be trying to figure out what to do with a dozen empty glass beer mugs. I might have to open a hipster cocktail pop-up. I really enjoyed the pâté, unusually topped with rhubarb, packed in a cute earthenware dish and sold in a duo with an apple-topped pâté. The apple one looked striking, and the pâté itself was delicious, but I think as a garnish the whole slice of apple would be a bit awkward and it would end up being put to one side and discarded.

They are also expanding their range of platters, which should do very well for them over the Christmas entertaining season. The Iberico meat platter looks particularly good as a more expensive treat. I'm just hoping that the snacking fuet and Iberico meat platters are available on Ocado, so I don't have to venture into actual shops with actual other people.

DISCLAIMER: I was invited to attend the Unearthed Christmas Press Show and given a goodie bag of olives and a USB stick. No other compensation was offered or requested and I was not required to post a review. All comments are my own and some may be hyperbolic for comedic effect.

Häagen-Dazs - real or nothing

One of the things that dismays Paul about me is my love for ice cream. He doesn't see the point and doesn't get why I love it so. He does have a point, of course: it increasingly looks like sugar is seriously damaging to your health. So, despite the beautiful weather, I have been turning down very kind offers of ice cream samples and I didn't take part in last month's BSFIC challenge.

Eventually and inevitably, I got an offer too good to refuse. The chance to attend a lunch, cooked by a Masterchef winner, to launch the Häagen-Dazs summer campaign. As I don't actually watch Masterchef, I had no idea who Natalie Coleman was, but it sounded impressive. Plus the event was being co-hosted by Great British Chefs and I bloody love that site.

When I arrived, a little late and a little discombobulated, I was shown to a roof terrace and plied with booze. A good start. They were serving cocktails designed to fit in with the ice cream flavours, so I started with a Rossini, which went down very easily and followed it up with a salted caramel martini. Then we were invited down to watch Natalie demonstrate how to make a classic vanilla custard-based ice cream. The emphasis for this Häagen-Dazs campaign is real ice cream, showcasing the natural ingredients they use, hence showing us how to make it from scratch.

 Nothing ground-breaking, although she did share a useful tip about gently rolling vanilla pods on a board to help release the seeds.

"nestergen leaf" = nasturtium - and I don't know who got the crab, but it sounded good!

More drinks, and then it was lunch time. To match the real ice cream were dishes featuring real eggs, milk, cream and butter. So delicious but good lord it was all very rich. To the point where it didn't really leave me in a great frame of mind or palate for tasting ice cream.

We started with duck egg yolks, confited in olive oil in the oven (no sous vide gadgetry!), served with green and white asparagus, hollandaise, nasturtium leaves and a generous shower of white truffle shavings.

Then more richness, in the form of meltingly tender, crackling-topped slow-cooked pork belly on a pillow of smooth, buttery cauliflower puree. A fat, sweet scallop was separated from the pork by a very welcome tangle of green apple and sharply dressed pea shoots. It was a bit too salty for my taste, and, although it was beautifully cooked and presented, I think I would have enjoyed it more had it not come just after confit duck egg and hollandaise. I envied Kerstin Rodgers/Ms Marmite Lover her vegetarian option - the pumpkin ravioli looked superb.

The vegetarian option

Natalie's ice cream was simply presented, with bowls and jugs of accompaniments for self-service. I garnished mine with a handful of roasted macadamia nuts and a pool of salted caramel sauce.

Then the serious fun began. Nadège Le Pennec, from the Häagen-Dazs R&D team, handed around a bowl of sugar and told us to put a bit in our mouths, while blocking our noses. I noted the teensiest bit of eye-rolling around the circle as we all did as we were told, and all thought "Sugar. Big deal". Then Nadège's magic trick as we unblocked our noses and discovered that the sugar was heavily scented with cinnamon. Completely undetectable just on the tastebuds, but revealed as soon as we let go of our noses.

Next came a blind tasting of four different vanilla ice creams. Two were pretty dreadful, with no aroma, an icy, milky texture and a taste that vaguely skirted around vanilla without actually hitting it. The other two were dense and creamy, a bit eggy, with enough aroma to survive freezing and a true vanilla flavour. We were split fairly equally between those two, when we were asked to guess which one was the Häagen-Dazs. Those of us who were wrong (...me) couldn't feel too bad about that though, because the one we picked... was Natalie's home-made. Pretty compelling, I thought.

The event drew to a close with opportunities to taste all the flavours, which I was in no state to appreciate, and we were sent home with little wicker hampers of the ingredients for real ice cream and Natalie's recipe.

I found it all interesting, because I didn't know anything about Häagen-Dazs prior to this. I remember when they launched in Australia in the late 1990s, and being vaguely aware of a "But they aren't even Danish, how can you trust them?" controversy. Which I don't entirely understand now, because they never claimed to be Danish - they are quite proud of their Brooklyn roots. So what with one thing and another, I'd never paid any attention at all to the brand. Now, well, it may have been lots of alcohol before lunch and the aroma of freshly grated truffle, but I totally drank the Kool-aid.

Which meant that when I saw this quote from Matt O'Connor of the Licktators in our local magazine, I bristled: 

Optima magazine No. 550 August 2nd 2014

"Milk protein powder, coconut oil, and a lot of air is what you are buying with Häagen-Dazs and the like. I'm amazed they can get away with it. Still, that's the Food Standards Agency for you," he says grimly.

So, as a little comparison, here is a screenshot of the Häagen-Dazs ingredients list for their vanilla ice cream, as sold on Ocado.

Fresh cream, condensed skimmed milk, sugar, egg yolk and natural vanilla.

And here is a screenshot of the Licktator's vanilla ice cream:

Wow. He really showed the big boys what real ice cream was all about, hey?...

So, to get rid of the taste of sour grapes, here is a recipe for one of the cocktails I particularly enjoyed. To be drunk with real ice cream, or by itself.

Salted Caramel Martini

35ml Butterscotch Schnapps
35ml Vanilla Vodka
15m Dry White Vermouth

Shake over ice and serve in a cocktail glass rimmed with salt

Edited to add: Daniel Young, of Young and Foodish, asked the Licktators on Twitter to comment on this comparison, and they stated that they were misquoted by Optima, that they were commenting about "Fake 99" ice cream in general.

Salt beef bagel

Here's the thing about bagels - I tend to think I like them more than I actually do. I've lost count of the number of times I've thought "Oh yum! Bagel!" and then got bored half way through the interminable chewing and scraped off the topping with a fork. Generally, I'd rather have something from the fluffier side of the breadroll family (as long as it isn't dusted in flour: I hate that).

But we were watching an old No Reservations episode, and Bourdain was eating bagels at a deli in New York, and it looked so good, that when I was offered some limited edition New York Bakery bagels to try, I was powerless to resist. These are a mixed seed bagel, with pumpkin, sunflower and linseeds baked in, and more seeds on top.

I didn't have time to cure my own brisket, so I bought a nice piece of organic salt beef for our sandwiches.

I split the bagels, toasted them, smeared them lavishly with hot English mustard and piled on the hot salt beef. It is, incidentally Colman's mustard's 200th anniversary, which they are celebrating with these adorably nostalgic labels. Unfortunately, the labels are only the normal paper ones, but I am hoping that they will produce some more memorabilia with that polar bear on it. The museum (you make mustard for 200 years, you get a museum) does sell a tea towel and an apron, but I'd like it on a proper mustard pot. Or one of the mustard powder tins. Anyway, since the Jewish community in London has been selling bagels for almost as long as Colman's have been making mustard, since before the influx of Polish Jews to New York even, it makes sense to me to use the very English mustard on what is usually considered a very American sandwich.

In the 20s apparently a bear with a toothache suggested mustard

The bagels were so nice that they weren't very bagelly at all...

My favourite salt beef sandwich in London is the one at the Brass Rail, in Selfridges. Lavishly filled with excellent salt beef and eye-watering quantities of mustard, the only drawback is the rye bread isn't quite sturdy enough, and ends up dissolving into wallpaper paste around your fingers. Making the sandwich on a toasted bagel does avoid that; it has the structural integrity to stand up to hot, moist meat (oh behave!) to the last bite. They did not, however, have the dense, chewy texture that I associate with bagels (another plus as far as I am concerned).

These seeded bagels had a pleasantly nutty, malty flavour that complemented the spice of the beef (this beef was quite a spicy one, it had residual little bits of coriander clinging to the edge). There was a slight sweetness to them as well, that I thought went well with the clean heat of the mustard.

I've never made bagels myself, but it is my understanding that they are usually a lean, fatless dough. Looking at the ingredient list, these bagels do have rapeseed oil in them, which is probably why they didn't go instantly stale the way other bagels seem to. In fact, they were still pleasantly fresh-tasting a couple of days later, ready to stand up to a schmear of cream cheese and quite a lot of smoked salmon, for a very good brunch.

In fact, the only thing I didn't like about these bagels were the seeds on top - the millet was impossible to chew, and most of the seeds just ended up scattered on and around the board where I prepared the sandwiches. So it turns out that I do like bagels, but only when they aren't very bagelly.

Mexgrocer.co.uk

Tomatillo salsa

Long-term Foodycat readers with good memories may recall that a few years ago I had a few goes at making my own cheese. I had varying results - my overall conclusion was that it takes a lot of milk and a very large saucepan to make a little cheese and it's worth paying other people to do. One of the cheeses that I made in that period was queso oaxaca, a knotted melting cheese, which I had never heard of or tasted before that point. The queso oaxaca tasted good and looked like the pictures, but I had nothing to compare it to, really, to know if I was getting it right.

Fast forward to 2014 and I was approached by Mexgrocer.co.uk and asked if I'd be interested in trying some of their products. I had a look at the site and noticed that they stock Mexican cheeses, so I would finally be able to taste queso oaxaca and figure out whether I was close to authenticity.

The box that arrived did not just contain queso oaxaca. They also sent me corn tortillas, chipotle sauce, a can of tomatillos and some queso chihuahua (which has nothing to do with dogs). Obviously it was time to plan a Mexican-themed meal or two.

We started, of course, with the queso oaxaca. It was absolutely delicious just eaten on its own, like a cross between halloumi and mozzarella. A little squeak under the teeth, but a really creamy and ever so slightly chewy texture and a good salty flavour. It came into its own in a quesadilla. Of which I took no photos because I was too keen to eat it.

As the queso chihuahua is described "as a good melting cheese, the richness and suppleness of Chihuahua cheese is preferred in baking dishes, fondues, pizza, and lasagna or casserole dishes" I decided to start our Mexican meal with queso fundido (I assume fundido comes from the same root as fondue and is all about the melted cheese).

I made a version with a layer of sauteed mushrooms underneath the melted cheese. We scooped it onto warm tortillas. Divine. The queso chihuahua also had a taste reminiscent of halloumi but melted into the most beautiful long strings.

mmm - stringy.

We also had some of the queso oaxaca on tacos. I cooked a steak, sliced it into ribbons and tossed it with some chipotle salsa. Then wrapped the meat in warmed tortillas with a little of the grated cheese. I am pretty sure my home made queso oaxaca would not have grated like this! The chipotle salsa had a good depth of flavour and a nice texture for this sort of thing.

Both of these cheeses are fairly expensive - this is not your everyday essentials cheese - but not unreasonably so. I would definitely buy it for another special meal, because it is delicious and that stretchy melting quality is very appealling. I couldn't see anything that said whether it was made with vegetarian rennet, so I'd have to find that out before making it the centrepiece of a vegetarian meal.

I also made some chorizo and roasted squash tacos, which I served with a basic tomatillo salsa - drained canned tomatillos, roasted green chillis, onion, coriander and a little bit of salt.

These tacos revealed something about myself that I should have figured out quite some time ago. I actually don't particularly like soft corn tortillas. I do, however, quite like plain tortilla chips. So a couple of days later I cut the remaining tortillas into wedges and fried them in a little hot oil until golden brown, crisp and curled. I sprinkled them with a little salt and drained them on some paper towels before piling them in a napkin-lined bowl.

We had some of the tomatillo salsa leftover too, so I mixed it into a mashed avocado for a guacamole. It was the perfect thing to scoop up with the chips.

It was only when I came to schedule this post that I realised it was going up on Cinco de Mayo. Appropriate, but entirely accidental.

Ben & Jerry's Greek Style Frozen Yoghurt

I had such a good time at the launch of the Ben & Jerry's Core flavours last year that I jumped at the chance to go to another one of their events. This one was the launch of three flavours of frozen yoghurt made with Greek-style yoghurt.

This time I confess I was a little apprehensive. It was being held in a Greek restaurant in Covent Garden which gets quite negative reviews, and while I love Greek food (garlic, olive oil and lemon juice, what's not to love?) and love frozen yoghurt I did fear that crappy food would mar the experience.

However, I engineered things in my favour by arranging to meet a friend for a drink beforehand, thus ensuring that whatever else happened it wasn't a waste of tube fare. It was pretty tempting to stay drinking rosé in a quiet bar, but I did tear myself away at the appropriate time.

My heart sank as the waitress who greeted me in the restaurant stared blankly at me. Fortunately, a better-informed member of staff overheard and led me downstairs where, he said, "everyone" was waiting for me. Everyone turned out to be a small number of bloggers (several more trickled in after me) and several bottles of prosecco. The prosecco was very pleased to see me.

Generally I think the fact that we were in a windowless room that I suspect is usually used to store extra chairs put a bit of a damper on things. Certainly the atmosphere was a bit subdued.

But then the food started to come out and a bit of perkiness was restored. The food was very, very good! Some of the best tiropitakia I've had (lovely chilli kick), delicious fried halloumi, succulent meatball/kefte sort of patties and lots of good-looking (but unwieldy, so I didn't try it) aubergine.

I muscled my way into a very pleasant conversation with Dom from Cocoa Runners and Judith from Mostly About Chocolate and started to enjoy myself.

The buzz of nervous PRs gave the first indication that something had gone slightly wrong with the actual frozen yoghurt tasting. When the bowls came out it was clear what the problem was - the fro-yo wasn't fro, it was really just yo. The freezer wasn't working.

Still, it gave me enough of an idea of the flavours that I had a look online when I got home and discovered that Ocado had the Greek-style yoghurts half price. I popped two of the flavours in my shopping and prepared to do some independent "research".

Greek Strawberry Shortcake (Greek-style yoghurt, strawberries & shortcake chunks): strawberry ice cream is generally my favourite, and the Ben & Jerry strawberry cheesecake ice cream is a favourite among strawberries so I was very interested to see how this compared. This has a good, fruity flavour and subtle yoghurty tang. Unfortunately the tub I bought had too high a proportion of fairly bland shortcake pieces, although I suspect that varies a bit from tub to tub. It's a bit lower in calories than the strawberry cheesecake (190/100g instead of 250/100g) and has half the fat, so it is a slightly healthier option if you are keeping an eye on those things. I'm not sure that it is enough of a healthier option to displace the strawberry cheesecake in my affections though.

Greek Vanilla Honey Caramel (Greek-style yoghurt, vanilla & a honey caramel swirl): this looked to me like a direct competitor to the Yeo Valley organic Greek-style honey frozen yoghurt, which I really like, but I think the caramel swirl gives this one the edge (the Yeo Valley one is slightly lower in calories and fat). It has a lovely creamy texture and a bit of a tang.

Overall, I think the emphasis on these is "ice cream", not "frozen yoghurt". They don't taste particularly worthy and they avoid some of the pitfalls of some of the other supermarket brands I've tried (rock-hard, weird elastic texture, floury aftertaste). In a perfect world they'd have the really clean, pronounced tang of the softserve fro-yo from Snog or the one from Itsu, but if you don't have my taste for really tangy yoghurt this will definitely appeal.

Banana split - banana, Ben & Jerry's Greek Style frozen yoghurt and chilli-glazed nuts - these are really quite small scoops.

Ben & Jerry's Core

On Tuesday evening I was invited to attend a sneak preview of a couple of Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavours. I don't say no to ice cream!

The Ben & Jerry's Core 500ml tubs contain a soft core of something (like a raspberry ripple sort of effect) with two flavours of ice cream around them. A few flavours were launched last year but these were new.

Woody made a fleeting visit

A masseuse was on-hand to give moo-ssages (apparently the cows have a massage machine so we were pretty much being given a taste of life as a dairy cow), a couple of nail artists were doing Ben & Jerry's themed manicures, the prosecco flowed and there were as many peanut butter and jam sandwiches and brownies as you could possibly want.

Peanut butter and jam? Yes, I'll get to that.

There was also a lot of ice cream. Lots and lots.

I started with my nails. Cow print with cow faces on the thumbs. Not my usual style at all but very cute and I had a great antipodean chat to the lovely Kiwi girl who did them.

Then on to the ice creams. The Blondie Brownie is a core of salted caramel with chocolate ice cream with chocolate brownie chunks and vanilla ice cream with blondie chunks.

The salted caramel was absolutely divine but I found the ice cream component a bit hard going. There were just too many chunks in it, which detracted from the caramel and made it all a bit too sweet (yes, the brownies are sweeter than the caramel), and not enough ice cream! Plus I am not really a fan of cookie dough or cakey sorts of inclusions in ice creams, so this one just wasn't the sort of thing I would usually order or eat. I had to have a second helping just to be sure though.

I much preferred the other flavour, Peanut Butter Me Up. An ode to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it was a core of raspberry jam with peanut butter ice cream, and vanilla ice cream studded with mini peanut butter cups. The jam was, of course, jammy but actually not too sweet, the peanut butter flavour was fairly subtle but given a boost every time I bit into one of the little peanut butter cups. I would definitely buy this one, although to be honest I think if they combined the salted caramel core from the Blondie Brownie with the ice cream and peanut butter cups from this one, it'd be much closer to my idea of ice cream heaven. Or a peanut butter caramel core in raspberry and vanilla ice creams? Now there's an idea...

Rhodri Morgan, one of the brand managers for Ben & Jerry's UK, did a very brief spiel about these new flavours, but then I got to have a bit of a chat to him about the brand, our shared love for Nigella Lawson, the wonders of twitter and so forth. Ben & Jerry's is of course a Unilever (massive global conglomerate ptooey!) brand now, but they seem to be trying to maintain their hippy roots with progressive policies and an eye on the environment. In the UK they have moved over to entirely fairtrade ingredients, their ice creams are vegetarian friendly and they are campaigning for equal marriage legislation and to improve welfare standards for dairy cows in the E.U. All of which I like. These ice creams do, of course, have a much longer ingredients list than home made but at least I recognise all the words on the labels.

And now to work on my plan for an even better peanut butter and jam inspired ice cream...

Two days before a hair cut and colour and sadly not my glorious orange handbag

Kettle Tortilla Chips

I got to try 3 of the 4 flavours

One of my favourite things in the world is a chilli Kettle chip. Not sweet chilli, chilli. Which is slightly unfortunate because they aren't sold in the UK and apparently were discontinued in Australia until there was an outcry. But in my memory they stand as the perfect snack - crisp, salty, spicy and just robust enough to dunk in a fairly runny dip.

Chasing that memory of perfection leads me to try lots of other chips and crisps, so I welcomed Kettle's offer of some samples of their new tortilla chip range. They made an unwise decision when they chose to put the samples in an envelope and pop them in the post, but enough big pieces survived to give a fair tasting.

In addition to three flavours of the tortilla chips (sea salt, sour cream & nacho cheese) they also sent me a recipe card with some dip ideas. The only problem was that I didn't particularly fancy the recipes (one contained a squirt of tomato paste, just added to a raw mixture, one contained tinned sweetcorn *shudder*, two relied on ingredients that are tricky to get without a bit of forward planning, i.e a ripe mango or a ripe avocado).

So I made a couple of other dips to try them with. A roasted red pepper "bagna cauda" (not very much like a bagna cauda at all, actually, and a beetroot and walnut dip.

As you would expect with a Kettle chip, the tortilla chips were crisp and crunchy. A little bit thinner than other brands of tortilla chips, which made them nicer as a snack but presented a problem with dunking. The bagna cauda was fine, but the chips kept breaking off in the beetroot dip, even though it wasn't that stiff a mixture.

Red pepper "bagna cauda" and beetroot and walnut dips

Of the three flavours, I preferred the sea salt. While I have a certain fondness for the powdery coatings of the other flavours, I think the nutty, corn-y-ness of a tortilla chip is best without it. But if you particularly go for flavoured tortilla chips, I don't think you'd be disappointed with these.

As a final test, I made nachos. We had loads of lamb left from a weekend roast, so I cut it up into small chunks and made a chilli with lots of chipotle in it. I placed a big mound of the chilli in a dish, surrounded it with the nacho cheese Kettle chips and piled on some grated cheese. I baked it at 180C until it was all brown and bubbly, then I served it with salsa and a dollop of sour cream.

Now, the chips kept their shape and crunch really well in the baking, and did a much better job of scooping the toppings than others I have tried.  But the flavourings on the surface of the chips obviously has quite a low burn point, because they blackened, and the blackened bits developed quite a bitter flavour, before the cheese had melted thoroughly.

So. An excellent tortilla chip for snacking or dunking in light dips, but probably best to stick to the sea salt ones for making nachos. 

Lamb chipotle nachos

Product Review: Cathedral City

Back in British Cheese Week, Cathedral City sent me a sample of their "Selections" (which actually don't seem to be on their website) to try. Selections are a bag of fourteen individually-wrapped snack-size portions of cheese, which apparently come in Mature, Extra Mature and a Variety pack. I was given the variety pack to try, which contains mature, extra mature and the Cathedral City flagship, the Vintage 20 cheddar.

Now, I like the extra mature. It's the best-tasting cheese our local corner shop sells, so we buy it fairly often when a cheese emergency is combined with lack of motivation to go farther afield to satisfy it. It's not fancy or artisan, but it is consistent and reliable. The mature isn't really to my taste - I like quite a strong cheddar and I found it just a bit too mild. After tasting a portion of the mature, the remaining portions went into a cheese sauce with a lot of mustard and nutmeg, I have to confess.

This is where the Selections pack gets me into a pickle. The Vintage 20 is really quite delicious. It has lovely little crunchy crystals in it, like a good parmesan, and a really robust flavour without the gum-ripping acidity you sometimes get with cheddar. But there were only 2 portions of it in the Selection pack, and you only get the Vintage 20 in the variety pack along with too much of the less-appealing mature. So what to do? I think when I need cheese snack-packs (for me, they are quite a good alternative to biscuits or chocolate at that 4pm slump time) I would just buy the extra mature and choose consistency over variety. No highs, but no lows either. I really don't live on the edge.

14 little snack-size pieces - or there were before we ate some prior to photographing

Melting Moments and Kenyan Tea for Cook the Books

A quaint little teashop in a historic part of town is a pleasant setting for a nice, gentle murder mystery. And Death by Darjeeling, our latest Cook the Books Club selection, really is a nice, gentle murder mystery.

Single estate Kenyan teas

I was never in doubt that teashop owner Theodosia Browning would figure out whodunnit. I also didn't much care - I was just happy to float along on a cloud of tea-scented steam, enjoying the feeling of Charleston in "winter" (seems to be much like an English summer!) and wondering when our heroine would get a date with the charming-sounding lawyer. No real suspense, just an entertaining story, steeped in tea.

Kaamba - "a very malty flavour with light hints of currant"

As I read it, I remembered that I had been sent* a selection of Kenyan single estate teas by the Tea Board of Kenya, and I'd never got around to tasting them. African teas only get a passing reference in Death by Darjeeling, but there is so much about the different qualities and flavours and the art of blending them that I felt this was definitely the time to have a play with them.

There was no doubt at all that these were 3 different teas! Ranging from the small, almost round crumbs of the Kaamba, to the long, plump strands of the Milima, they didn't look at all alike.

Then things started to come a bit unstuck for my career as a tea blender. The teas, tasted by themselves, didn't taste the same, but if my life depended on it I couldn't have described the differences. Honestly, I'm quite good at wine tasting vocabulary, and I can normally pick out if a wine reminds me of tobacco or leather or red fruits or tropical fruit shower gel. But this? It tastes like tea. The taste of dried leaves boiled in water (that's a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference). It's a taste I really like, but I just can't describe what makes the Kaamba different from the Marinyn.

Milima - "a traditional orthodox tea with a bright liquor"

I realised that I needed some guidance from the experts. The tasting notes that came with the teas suggested a few different blends, and I felt that the one described as "a fresh crisp tea with an attractive bright colour" was right for me. Over the last year I have stopped taking milk in my tea, and as I was making a fresh, fruity biscuit to accompany it, I thought fresh and crisp would definitely work. And indeed, the blend of Marinyn and Milima was absolutely perfect (although I have also lost the knack of making tea in a pot and made it much too weak for the people drinking it with milk).

To go with the life-saving oolong (it's not oolong, but I'm prepared to bet Bertie Wooster's mostly wasn't either) I decided to make passionfruit melting moments.

The baked goods that Haley produces for Theodosia's shop are things that I think of as very American - blackberry scones (not much like English scones), butter cookies, caramel nut shortbread - so I decided to make one of the pinnacles of the Australian baker's art.

Melting moments are a very old-fashioned sort of biscuit, quite crisp but melting to nothing as you bite them because of the cornflour or custard powder in them. And, as most old-fashioned dishes tend to be, very, very simple. The most traditional ones are vanilla or lemon flavoured, sandwiched with lemon icing, (they have to be sandwiched) but passionfruit are so common in Australia that they turn up a lot too.

I used Dan Lepard's recipe, and it was perfect. I used custard powder (since I'd bought some for another Dan Lepard recipe, his slider buns) and as well as the important melting texture it gave the biscuits a lovely appetising colour. Just the thing to accompany a cup of tea and a good book.

Passionfruit melting moments

* Usual disclaimer: the product was provided free of charge, no other compensation was offered or requested, views are my own and no PRs get to vet my copy

This month, Cook the Books is being hosted by Rachel, the Crispy Cook, and you still have a couple of days to get your posts to her!