Iceland/Ed's Easy Diner Selection

I've been a bit of a fan of Ed's Easy Diner since a friend dragged me into one some years ago. I'd seen them around - frequently wandering past a London branch while on the way somewhere - but, having eaten in a few diners of that style while on holiday in the States, I had been understandably reluctant to sample a British attempt at replicating the classic American Diner experience. Seemingly Ed's Easy Diner has had some financial difficulties in recent years, and it appears all the London branches have now closed... So perhaps it's fortuitous that Iceland have partnered up with them to create a line of microwaveable foodstuffs from their diner menu.

I picked up an initial selection of these almost two weeks ago, and had planned to write about each one individually, but ended up losing momentum and deciding to make a single, collective post instead. Unfortunately, in the meantime, popular YouTuber and microwave gourmet, Stuart Ashen has already covered some of them.

Still, this is snacks & the single man, so I'm pretty much obliged to mention them, if only to break the excessively long hiatus I've had from this blog.

'Breakfast' Options

3 Pancakes with Bacon & Maple Syrup
I'd always been a bit dubious about the sweet-savoury combination that is pancakes with bacon topped with maple syrup but when I tried it for the first time while while on holiday, as a hotel breakfast, I loved it. Pancakes, bacon and maple syrup shouldn't work, but it does... and the same - more or less - can be said about this frozen option. It works as pretty much a simple 2-stage process in terms of 'cooking' (technically reheating), with the pancakes going in separately, side-by-side, then the bacon going on the side with the pancakes stacked. Once everything's cooked, the bacon gets put on top and the maple syrup poured over the top.

I don't think I've ever had microwaved pancakes before (then again, I wouldn't necessarily know, in some diners) but these were surprisingly good, if perhaps a touch soggy due to condensate. The bacon is a little undercooked by my standards, and not especially flavourful, but I wouldn't tend to expect much from microwaved bacon. The maple syrup is actually genuine maple syrup rather than maple syrup-flavoured goo, and a decent amount is provided. Perhaps not enough for everyone, but certainly sufficient for me. I think my only real complaint would be that there's really not enough bacon... but, as a snack breakfast/brunch/lunch option plucked from the freezer and prepared in so short a time in the microwave, it's better than I'd expected.

A pretty good start to my experience of this new selection, overall, though my second experience of this was somewhat less positive due to the very much not-crispy bacon being, in fact, rather rubbery.

Breakfast Muffin with Hash Brown & Sausage Pattie

This was in my second sampling of the Ed's Easy Diner range, and I had my suspicions that it ran the risk of being pretty plain even as I picked it out of the freezer cabinet. It's literally just a single hash brown, a sausagemeat pattie and a muffin. Frankly, I was surprised that no sauce of any kind was included and somewhat concerned by the absence of any form of egg. Hell, even Iceland's own brand had a mini-omelette. A hash brown is nice, but it ain't a proper breakfast muffin without some egg. Cooking is another multi-stage affair, with each part getting some time in the microwave prior to final assembly.

The end result doesn't taste bad - the sausagemeat pattie is a touch plain, and the hash brown lacks any seasoning, but both came out moist after being blasted in the microwave. Even the muffin survived quite well, without becoming overly soggy at the bottom. However, the absence of any condiment, some egg, or even a slice of burger cheese, renders this a very dull snack. Pretty sure that, if this is on the menu at Ed's Easy Diners, there'd be a bit more to it than this. 

Burgers & Hot Dogs

Mac'n'Cheese Burger With Bacon

Here's where the selection started to go a little downhill, for several reasons. I have to admit that I wasn't sold on the idea of a burger with added bacon and mac'n'cheese that had to be prepared in a microwave, but this thing let me down before I even started cooking it. It's supplied with the bun frozen together, the tiny portion of bacon frozen to the underside of the bun, the burger stuck to the bacon and the most miserly portion of mac'n'cheese you'll ever see, taking up less than half the capacity of the plastic bag it's supplied in.

Trying to separate the bun led to the top half breaking. Microwaving led the bun to become dry and crumbly. The mac'n'cheese just gets dumped in a bowl of hot water to thaw, then heated briefly in the microwave, while the burger and the bacon worked about as well as could be expected in a microwave. Assembling the finished burger probably would have been easier if the bun hadn't broken.

However, since the burger is part beef, part chicken, it looks anaemic and has very little flavour - some additional seasoning may have worked wonders, but an increased beef content would have been preferable. The mac'n'cheese isn't so vile an addition to a burger as I'd expected, but it's both unseasoned and not particularly cheesy. The main disappointment was that there was barely enough bacon to add any flavour to the finished burger.

There are instructions included for part-cooking this (basically just the bun) with a toaster rather than the microwave but, personally, I'd say the better option would be to set the bun aside ahead of time to thaw on its own. Toasting it at that point might prove more effective, but use of a microwave is absolutely not recommended for the bun.

Chilli Dog

This is another one I didn't have high hopes for, not least because my relationship with hot dogs generally hasn't been great. I like the idea of hot dogs - particularly the smokiness of a really good one - but some of the ones I've had, even in bricks-and-mortar diners, let alone from supermarkets, have been pretty awful. Add to that, my experience of any chilli other than freshly-made has been diabolical, and so-called 'nacho cheese sauce' is frequently vile.

So imagine my surprise when this turned out to be pretty delicious... Although, thinking back, I can't say that any individual component was outstanding. The sauce is fairly inoffensive, pretty bland, even. The chilli is a little thin, but the flavour is OK and, coupled with a halfway decent hot dog, it works quite well. The main downside - and this is kind of a running theme with the line - is that the bun doesn't do well in the microwave. The outside becomes dry and flaky, and the cut for adding the hot dog isn't really deep enough so I ended up cutting it a little deeper before loading it up.

This one had also cooled down quite a bit before I took my first bite - I wasn't very organised, and didn't bring a camera into the kitchen until after I'd assembled the hot dog. These kinds of things really have to be eaten piping hot, lest the unnatural textures and weak flavour become too apparent.

Classic Hot Dog

My subjectively positive experience with the Chilli Dog encouraged me to give this version a whirl, since it's a more traditional, simple hot dog. Coming just with a sachet each of mustard and ketchup and a sachet of crispy onion pieces, its preparation is far simpler - thaw the sauces, irradiate the bun, then the hot dog, put the two together, add the sauces, and then sprinkle over the onion...

...Unfortunately - and surprisingly, given that the hot dog itself is surely identical to that included in the Chilli Dog box - this one really didn't work for me. The bun dried out so much that it just broke in half when I tried to put the hot dog into it, the sauces were beyond bland, the onion was virtually flavourless and not remotely crispy, while the hot dog had the consistency (and something approaching the flavour) of rubber. I was able to finish it, but it's left me less enthusiastic about picking up the Chilli Dog again, in case I just got lucky with the first.

Pizza

Pepperoni Stonebaked Pizza

While I'm a conscientious objector when it comes to microwaving pizza (with the exception of leftovers from the night before - they're fair game), I'm quite a fan of frozen pizza generally, even though the excessive oiliness of some - Iceland's own brand in particular - can sometimes upset my stomach. My first impression of this, just going by the box, was that it was small to the point of being wholly inadequate as anything other than a snack, or as just one part of a larger meal. Opening up the box revealed - to no-one's surprise - that the pizza itself is appreciably smaller than the box, not least in terms of height when laying flat... You could probably fit three of them in the box, two at least.

Nevertheless, after a brief burst of microwave radiation, I'd have the describe the pizza as reasonably competent. Naturally, it's more base than topping, and there's a paltry fraction of the cheese depicted in the product shot on the box. Naturally, the act of microwaving it leaves the underside a little sweaty, but the same can be said of any and all microwave pizzas.

Taste-wise, it's certainly not bad, though I found the pepperoni a little anaemic, lacking the punch even of some of Iceland's own brand products, and certainly not as good as the Chicago Town 2-pack mini-pizzas or pizza subs which, I would say, are one of this product's closest analogues. As expected, though, I was still rather hungry after polishing this off.

Desserts

2 Waffles with Chocolate Sauce

I had a great sense of foreboding about this since, when microwaving things from frozen, there's a certain inevitability of one of two outcomes: it'll be too dry (like the burger and hot dog buns above) or it'll be desperately soggy... and neither is conducive to the enjoyment of waffles.

Granted, as with the burger buns - and even the pancakes - there's the option to heat them in the toaster and, upon reflection, that would seem to be the better - perhaps only - method for this dessert. Because, following the microwave instructions to the letter here, the end result was droopy, soggy waffles. Sure, they tasted OK, but part of the waffle experience is the delightful, subtle crunch surrounding the still-moist innards, and the way they soften as the sauce or ice cream start to soak in. There's something truly sad about a waffle that sags, since their lattice structure is intended to keep them rigid while minimising the amount of mixture needed to make them.

The only other let-down was the chocolate sauce, which was very, very sweet and not particularly chocolaty. This is fairly common with things called 'chocolate sauce', which can sometimes be so sugary they burn the back of my throat. This was was just a bit gunky, so I'll probably give the version with salted caramel sauce a go at some point... Making sure I cook the waffles in the toaster.

The Ed's Easy Diner range presents very much a hit-and-miss selection, not just in its individual products, but in repeat experiences of those products. Having now had a second set of the pancakes'n'bacon, I've been put off trying them again because the fat on the bacon was like chewing gum. I wouldn't touch most pre-packaged burgers with a bargepole simply because my experiences of supermarket meat-based burgers have been largely regrettable. I may try the Chilli Dog again but, having disliked the 'Classic' version so thoroughly, I'm not convinced it would be worth the risk, even at the typically low Iceland price.

The bottom line, I guess, is that none of these would be especially difficult or time-consuming to make from scratch, seasoning to taste, and adding such condiments as are desired. Hell, I've already done it myself. The Breakfast Muffin was particularly dull and, given that sauces were included in pretty much every other product, it's baffling that there wasn't even a sachet of ketchup included.

Your mileage may vary. Your experience and expectations of burgers, sausagemeat patties and hot dogs may be very different from mine. However, I can be reasonably certain that either thawing the buns naturally, rather than relying on a microwave, or using the toaster where possible, would yield better results.

Experiments with Gousto #7: Crispy Baked Tacos, Refried Beans & Pineapple Salsa

Apologies for the delay in following up the continuing experiments with Gousto - it's been a good couple of weeks since I cooked the last of this latest batch (and ate all of it myself, as my girlfriend was away for the weekend). There's no particular reason for the delay, I just haven't felt like writing about my cooking efforts lately.

Not that they went badly (until the last one - but more on that when I get to it), just that I've been trying and failing to get all kinds of things done, and I wanted to give this the attention it deserved, rather than bashing out three perfunctory posts. This was, I think, the first recipe for the relevant week that my girlfriend and I flagged as a definite choice. Everything on offer looked great, but we're both big taco fans, and we'll often make the fillings from scratch anyway, so this wasn't a massive departure from the sort of thing we've made in the past, just a specific recipe we hadn't tried yet.

The first thing I need to say about this recipe is that it really needs some way of ensuring the tortillas keep their shape during the baking. I spent quite some time trying to even up the distribution of the tortillas in the dish, and ensure they were as close to U-shaped as possible, only for them to curl up, flop over and basically do their own thing in the oven. This led to several of the tortilla/tacos being very difficult to fill when the time came, and at least one had to be cracked to get it open far enough to drop in the refried beans. The salsa, being quite chunky, proved even more tricky.

On the whole, preparing this one went smoothly and was fairly easy - the 30 minute estimate is probably quite accurate though, as usual, I did a lot of prep work ahead of time. The salsa was the first thing I made up, since it required only chopping, mixing and then keeping aside until it was time to dish up. The cherry tomatoes and pineapple rings only needed to be chopped roughly, which is always a good thing in my books, as chopping finely is something I have still yet to master. Next time I do this, I'll probably quarter them as halves are a little too chunky... and, to be honest, I'm not sure cherry tomatoes were necessary, as normal tomatoes could be more easily chopped into smaller pieces while remaining suitably chunky. I'd also query the necessity of adding a teaspoon of juice from the tin of pineapple because, unless the chunks are fully drained, they come soaked with quite enough juice for a reasonable salsa, and deliberately adding more just seemed to leave me with way too much fluid in my salsa - it includes a tablespoon of olive oil as well, after all.

The only really substantial task in this recipe is making up the refried beans, which is surprisingly simple... So much so, in fact, that I may take to doing it more often, since my girlfriend and I both like refried beans. The specifics of the process, as dictated by Gousto, seem a little strange to me - adding the dry stuff (smoked paprika, ground cumin and chilli flakes) before the chipotle paste, tomato frito and the hundred millilitres of water was more than a little counterintuitive as the powders tended to clump rather than properly mixing in with the beans. I think I ended up cooking the beans for longer than the 5-8 minutes suggested, but I'm still not entirely sure what constitutes "a medium heat" on my hob, and probably spent too long adjusting it up and down, according to how it seemed to be going. The final stage - adding in the lime juice, seasoning and following the instruction to "gently crush a few of the beans" - is very much a personal taste thing. When ordering refried beans in a restaurant, you can expect anything from a full-on bean mash to something where the individual beans are still easily discernible... The photos on the recipe card seemed to suggest a middle ground, slightly beyond the "gentle" crushing of "a few of the beans" the text described, so I just aimed to mash them up to the exteny that I, personally, prefer.

I do feel obliged to quibble the quantities, as a single tin of beans (plus the other stuff) ended up equating to approximately half the quanity of refried beans I would want to divide between six tortilla/taco shells... perhaps that just proves what a porker I can be but, like I said, I really like refried beans. Put it like this: The first three tacos each received a heaped tablespoon of beans... after that, I had to start getting stingy and, by the last taco, I was literally scraping the bottom of the pan for a decent portion.

As mentioned, actually transferring the beans into the part-cooked tortillas was troublesome, and I think what's really needed is a sort of toasting rack, where the tortillas can be wrapped around a framework to ensure they keep the optimal U-shaped-ness for the 5-minute initial bake. Once done, these can be transferred to the oven-proof dish to be (ahem) filled with the refried beans, and returned to the oven for the final 5-minute bake.

Given that - as mentioned at the start - the salsa was rather more fluid than it needed to be, the finished and garnished tacos were somewhat flooded, and really didn't need any additional lime juice to be drizzled over. Portion-size aside, though, the tacos were very tasty, and I'll definitely be giving this recipe another try at some point.

One huge advantage to this sort of thing is that the recipe for refried beans is so easy to embellish - more or less of the herbs or the chilli flakes, dark chocolate could be added, pinto and/or kidney beans could be used along with the black beans, etc - so the possibilities in that alone are virtually endless. I'll certainly double the quantity of beans next time, even if I don't add another variety. I'll likely chop the pineapple a little more, use normal tomatoes rather than cherry, and absolutely not add any additional juice. A standard onion - brown or red - could be used in place of, or as well as the shallot, too... so, really, this whole recipe encourages experimentation.

Aside from the frustrations caused by the uncooperative tacos, this was great fun to prepare and, being very simple, could easily become a go-to, either in and of itself for a quick veggie meal, or as a component of a more diverse, Mexican-themed dinner, since both the refried beans and the salsa could be served on the side.

One sidenote is that, where a recipe card states, for example, "this is your pineapple salsa", I've previously been inclined to read an emphasis on "your", because it's often come straight after the bit about seasoning... Looking at this particular recipe card, I suspect I have done so in error, as this seems to be more matter-of-factly stating "this is your x" by way of saying "this portion of the recipe is concluded".

Puzzling...

Experiments with HelloFresh #3: Fennel & Olive Fettuccine with Fresh Parsley

No, I haven't forgotten how to count, this should really have been the final post, but I'm temporarily skipping the second for reasons I'll get into when I finally post it. I'll also do the summing-up with that post rather than this one, as it'll make more sense that way.

As much as anything on this blog makes sense, that is.

After doing things in my usual haphazard fashion on the first recipe, my girlfriend mentioned that, when she's cooking, she'll often do snippets of preparatory chopping throughout the day, by way of a five minute break from her studies. While I wasn't quite that organised, I did make a start on this earlier in the evening than with any of my previous efforts, and did most of the chopping in advance of any of the actual cooking. I also followed another bit of her advice: she'd seen and heard my frustration with all the 'finely chop ingredient x' malarky in the first post and, when it came to the garlic, she suggested I simply use our garlic press. The end result is basically the same, if not better, and saves on an awful lot of effort. It was also nice to have a genuine reason to use my mortar and pestle for a change, grinding the fennel seeds - I knew I'd bought it for a reason...

I was particularly tickled, too, when the instructions helpfully suggested a mandolin for thinly slicing the fennel. My girlfriend picked one up a while back and, while it's not quite fine enough to generate the 'almost translucently thin' slices the instructions specified, it certainly made short work of slicing the awkwardly-shaped fennel bulb.

Once the chopping was out of the way, I read through the instructions several times over. Unlike the first two recipes, there weren't any massive glitches in the ingredient quantities (although specifying '2 cups' of sliced fennel bulb seemed redundant considering only one bulb was provided, and I kinda had to use the whole thing one way or another), so I really just wanted to be sure of what I needed to do next at every step, and to get a vague idea of the timings before starting things off. The second step in the recipe is cooking the red pepper strips, for which it recommends "15 mins or until lightly charred on the outside". The next step is cooking the rest of the veg in a pan, eventually turning it into a sauce for the pasta. The timings seemed to match up pretty well, so I started each process almost simultaneously, just to see if I could keep things on track.

The sauce comes together in several short stages that I found reasonably easy to follow since I had everything ready-prepared around me. The only hitch I'd had was that this recipe calls for black olives, and I definitely didn't get any black olives in the box. Thankfully, my girlfriend really likes olives, so we tend to have some in stock. The only real difficulty then was that, again, it specified the olive content as '2 tablespoons', which I still say is an utterly ridiculous measure for bisected fruit. Still, the definition gleaned from the first recipe helped me choose the appropriate number of olives for this dish. When the tinned tomatoes are added to the pan, the recipe suggests adding sugar but I've never found that necessary - tomatoes are sweet enough and, coupled with the rest of the veg, there's enough sugar in there naturally for my tastebuds. And that's saying something.

Once everything is in the pan, the recipe instructs that the heat should be turned down low so the sauce can boil down and thicken up, and it's at this point that the pasta needs to be cooked. Personally, I found it amusing that the card includes a definition of 'al dente' under the heading 'Tip', but your mileage may vary.

Just to prove that I'm not consistently terrible at cooking, the pasta was done only moments before the oven's alarm went off to tell me that the red pepper strips were ready, so both elements were added to the sauce in the pan in good time. The final stage was chucking in the parsley and the cheese (which strikes me as odd, and one of the Gousto recipes did the same, where my girlfriend and I would normally tend to add the cheese on top, once the meal had been served... not least because it means you don't end up having to scrape congealed cheese off your pan when you do the washing up). With a final garnish of - oh, for fuck's sake - 'finely chopped' fennel fronds, dinner was served...

Based on the two recipes I bothered photographing myself, I have to conclude that there's something wrong with HelloFresh's photography or their Photoshop work, as both this and the 'Easter' Ragu were depicted as rather brown in the stock photos, while they tended more toward red when I'd finished cooking... and I'm pretty sure I didn't get anything that significantly wrong on either of these.

As we were eating, my girlfriend commented that the fennel was identifiable in the sauce, but not overpowering, as fennel can sometimes be - being almost licorice in flavour. I certainly enjoyed the dish, but have to say I found it rather bland overall... it's possible I gave it too few "good grinds of black pepper", or that the chilli was just cooked for too long - it didn't have the spicy kick I was expecting, given that the first instruction says to "finely chop as much of the chilli as you dare". Perhaps I'll have to try this one again, and deliberately try to spice it up as much as possible...

This was definitely the easiest of the three HelloFresh recipes for me to follow, though how much of that was down to me doing more preparatory work in advance, and how much was because the recipe is actually easier, I cannot say. What I will say is that the card reckons this should be done in about 25 minutes, and I took the best part of an hour over it. Admittedly, most of that was due to taking my time over the preparatory work and my neurotic re-reading of the instructions, but that's a hell of a discrepancy. Not to say I particularly rate myself as any kind of kitchen ninja, but the folks at HelloFresh do seem to presume a level of competence far higher than mine.

Probably the neatest presentation I've ever managed when cooking
for myself and my girlfriend...

If you think you might fancy giving HelloFresh a try (and are within the UK mainland), please feel free to use my referral code MPMDQT for an introductory discount. Yes, that also gets me a discount on my next order, but further deliveries are currently on hold while I complete this first set of recipes and consider how this system fits in with my current... erm... 'lifestyle'.

Quick Pie Roundup

A selection of boxed pies under special offer turned up at my local Morrisons a couple of weeks back (yes, it's taken me that long to write about them - they were eaten very quickly). The range is called 'Pie in the Sky' and, while the packaging is all bright colours and fun cartoons, it doesn't list a website or even a Facebook page... pretty strange for a new product which is otherwise unique and stylish. In fact, the packaging doesn't even go into any great detail about the makers, Kerry Foods Ltd. Still, that's just a weird choice about advertising rather than anything important about the product, and it just means I can't add a link to them for convenience.

I picked up three different pies from a selection of four or five on the shelves and tried them out over the course of a week, either on their own as a quick snack lunch, or with a selection of veg for dinner.

Cluck & Sizzle
Contained within a box sporting a cute cartoon of a pig and a chicken, this is - no surprises - a chicken and bacon pie. It claims smoked bacon on the packaging, and the meat is in a white wine sauce. The pastry is nice and light, not overly stodgy or dry, but the filling is a bit of a mixed bag. It quickly becomes clear that the white wine sauce is probably the largest component in the pie, and the filling is very liquid. There are a fair few chicken pieces of a reasonable size, but the bacon comes in tiny shavings, none larger than a grain of rice, and it's not exactly plentiful. What little is there tastes good but is pretty much overwhelmed by the white wine sauce, so I honestly couldn't tell whether it tasted like smoked bacon or not. The chicken comes out better - it has good flavour in and of itself (unusual enough for chicken, let alone in a sauce, in a pie) and the sauce complements it well. The sauce has a good, rich flavour to it, but it's far too runny for this kind of pie, especially when there's so little meat in there.

Overall, it's very much a case of 'could do better', particularly where the shameful dearth of bacon is concerned. I'd expected good, hearty chunks of bacon (most likely with large amounts of fat, but beggars can't be choosers) rather than the crumbs floating in a sea of white wine sauce. More meat overall would have been a better complement to the quality of the sauce.

Moo Achoo
Long-term readers of this humble blog will no doubt be aware of my scepticism toward anything claiming to be spicy, and that seems to extend to 'peppered steak'. More often than not, any seasoning would get overwhelmed by the sauce but, thankfully, not so here. The contents of this pie are described as 'tender braised beef with cracked black pepper and onion in a rich sauce', and it hits the mark perfectly. The chunks of beef are nice and large (with no discernible fatty bits in the pie I tried), but pepper is very nearly the dominant flavour (albeit far from sneeze-inducing). The onion is softened to the point where it's almost undetectable, other than in the subtle bite it ads to the flavour of each mouthful. The sauce is definitely rich - not to mention much thicker than the white wine sauce in 'Cluck & Sizzle' - but it's essentially just a garden variety gravy. Also, perhaps because the makers didn't think there was enough pepper in the sauce, there's a sprinkling on the pie crust as well.

This was my favourite of the three pies, largely because the plentiful chunks of beef were so well complemented by the thick oniony, superbly peppery sauce. It's very warming and very filling.

Hot Cow
This pie - billed as 'hot chilli seasoned minced beef with kidney beans in a spicy tomato sauce' - I'm in two minds about. One the one hand, it seemed to be literally filled to the brim, and that is quite rare for packaged pies these days. The filling appears to be proportionally more minced beef than anything else, and it's very well seasoned, so as to be hot without being eyewatering. On the other hand, it's not very successful as 'chilli' because the bean content is extremely low, and the tomato sauce would be pretty bland were it not for the seasoned meat.

It's certainly filling, and as a component of a larger dinner it's excellent. It's just the right level of spiciness to go well with whatever you'd normally serve with a beef pie, but will go equally well with more heavily seasoned accompaniments.

Iceland Ultimate Snacks Fiery Chicken Melt Panini

I'm not sure whether it says more about me as a snacker or Iceland as a purveyor of snacks, but I'm beginning to find their line of 'Ultimate Snacks' a bit of a disappointment. I should probably have learnt from the meagre-yet-tasty Tuna Melt, but this £1 promise of "cooked Chicken Breast Pieces with a Chilli Seasoning and a slice of Cheddar Cheese with Chilli" just sounded too good to miss.

In terms of quantity of filling, it's very telling that my first two mouthfuls were bread with a hint of chilli sauce. After this, I opened the panini up and - going from memory, here - there probably weren't more than a dozen small chunks of cooked chicken in there. I'd also question the bit about the 'slice of cheddar cheese', because a slice wouldn't have melted quite so thoroughly after a couple of minutes in the microwave. I'm guessing either grated cheese or broken up crumbs of cheese were used - maybe a slice's worth, but that's hardly the same thing.

The sauce would have been more of a redeeming feature if it had been remotely 'fiery', but even the two-chilli 'Medium' flash on the box seemed like an overstatement. It's a fairly sweet chilli sauce which rather overpowers what little cheese is present, despite being so mild. A couple of mouthfuls were slightly spicy, but the rest was rendered mostly impotent by the huge amount of bread compared to its fillings.

What little chicken is there seems like good quality stuff, but the pieces are smaller and less plentiful than the image on the box would suggest.

If you're looking to stock up on frozen snack foods, this is one to avoid - there are others in the range with a lot more bang for your buck. Cheap as it is, it just doesn't live up to its description.

Salmon with Chilli, Ginger & Lime Sauce

The problem with some food advertising is that it gives me ideas...

Ideas that, were I to stop and think, would lead me to suspect I'm turning into something akin to those dangerous scientists from Sci-Fi stories. You know the type - too wrapped up in the discovery that something can be done to wonder whether it should be done.

Yes... Once in a while, the urge to try something wacky overcomes my basic need to prepare something quick and - above all - definitely edible, and I end up doing something completely stupid for dinner.

But I digress.

Recently, the Saucy Fish Company have been advertising quite a bit on television and, I have to say, their wares look very tempting. Not only do they sell sauces, they sell fish along with an 'ideal accompanying' sauce, including a range of 'cook in the bag' options, along the lines of Bird's Eye's 'Bake to Perfection' line. One of the options they describe in the advert is salmon with chilli, lime and ginger. I had one of those 'lightbulb moments', realising that I had some salmon in my freezer, some chilli peppers drying on my kitchen windowsill, a bottle of Waitrose lime juice in my fridge, and several sachets of 'Very Lazy' ginger paste in a cupboard. What could go wrong?

Well, based on that previous attempt at a ginger glaze that didn't glaze, quite a lot. But did I let that deter me?

Ingredients (quantities are approximate, and for roughly 1 serving):

• Dried Chilli Pepper (about 1/4 of the pepper)
• Very Lazy Ginger Paste (2 sachets)
• Maple Syrup (2 tablespoons)
• Lime Juice (3 teaspoons)
• Salmon Fillet

Preparation Time: Approx 10mins to prepare the sauce, 15 minutes to bake

Tools Required:

• Sharp Kitchen Knife
• Small Dish or Cup
• Stirring Implement
• Kitchen Foil
• Baking Tray

The Process:
Preheat oven to approx 200-210C (for fan assisted... about 230C if not). Cut approximately 1/4 of a dried chilli pepper into small pieces and mix in with 2 sachets worth of ginger paste. Add 2 tablespoons of Maple syrup and 3 teaspoons of lime juice. Stir thoroughly, till the resulting paste is smooth.

Lay the salmon fillet on enough kitchen foil to wrap around the fillet and cover it completely. Pour (or spoon) the sauce over the top, then close up the foil, place it on a baking tray, and stick it into the oven for about 10-15 minutes.

The Results:
Actually, this wasn't half bad. I did sneak a taste of the sauce before adding it to the salmon, just to see how it was coming along, and adjusted the quantities according to whatever I felt was lacking. It didn't glaze (even after sticking it under the grill for another couple of minutes, just as an experiment), but I suspect I should have used some kind of honey rather than Maple syrup. Alternatively, grilling for longer might have worked... certainly, the run-off had not only glazed, but started burning... which is vaguely promising.

This home-made sauce isn't as smooth or as clear as what I've seen of the Saucy Fish Co's version, and I - perhaps foolishly - didn't include any of the seeds in the sauce, so the chilli didn't have as much of a kick as it might have done, but this is certainly something I shall revisit and attempt to refine in future.

Uncle Ben's Chilli Con Carne Sauce

OK, I'm playing it safe again.

In many ways, this is going to be a rinse-and-repeat of the Spaghetti Bolognese writeup, because it's essentially frying some minced beef, then adding a ready-made sauce. Hum.

To make it a bit more interesting, therefore, I'm going to link to a proper Chilli recipe (once it's available) used by a friend who's a real American-style Chilli connoisseur, for the sake of comparison.

Ingredients:

• Uncle Ben's Chilli Con Carne Sauce (1 jar is enough for anywhere between 2-4 people)
• Minced Beef (approx 300g is recommended by the instructions on the jar. Fresh is always preferable, but I've tended to use frozen, from Iceland)
• Grated Cheese (optional)

Preparation Time: About 10 minutes!

Tools Required:

• Medium-sized Saucepan (or Frying Pan)
• Stirring Implement
• 1 Burner on your Hob

The Process:
Set your chosen pan on the hob on a high setting. Add the beef, and keep it moving as it browns. There's rarely any need for extra oil, because the beef will probably contain more than enough fat. It should only take about five minutes to brown 300g, even from frozen.

Once all the beef is evenly cooked, tip in the jar of sauce, which already contains the beans, peppers and onions so, unless you're really desperate for something that's not included (mushrooms, perhaps?), there's no need to add anything else. Just keep it moving, and wait for it to start bubbling.

While this is going on, make ready with whatever extras you'll be serving along with your chilli. Tortillas and dips are always fun (and tend to be nicer when it's all served up fresh together - few things are worse than the way far too many restaurants serve chilli'n'tortillas, which ends up as a soggy, congealed lump before you're halfway through), but Uncle Ben's also have a Spicy Mexican style rice in their Express range of microwave-cooked rices. Serve up in a bowl, and top with grated cheese if required.

The Results:
I have to say, as someone who has only recently started eating chilli, I really rather liked this. The spiciness is spot on for my tastebuds, and the proportions of beans, peppers and onions in the sauce are most agreeable. Even my chilli connoisseur friend was surprised when, after a mere 10 minutes in the kitchen, I presented her with a bowl of chilli this good.

Serving it with tortillas and dips is probably the best route (though I wasn't able to find any sour cream at short notice, so we had to make do with guacamole), and I did find that the Uncle Ben's Spicy Mexican rice was perhaps a little too spicy to work as a good accompaniment to this dish - one effectively cancelled out the other. Topping with grated cheese does add to the experience, but Cheddar is probably not the right choice - it doesn't melt quickly enough, even when added to the chilli bowl immediately after serving. Something like Monterey Jack might be a better fit, as it melts more easily and its flavour isn't as intrusive on the chilli.