Belin Crackini Saveur Fromage Frais & Oignon

A little baggie of tasty biscuitty snacks from French snack company Belin. Nouveau it says on the packet, and cuit au four.

Sometimes you look at a packet of crisps or crispy snacks and wonder just why they are cooked in the oven instead of fried. I guess it's a health issue. Although, to be honest, a crispy snack isn't going to be super healthy even if it's cooked in an oven. In this case, since it's a sort of a biscuit, perhaps it makes sense.

It's a slightly odd rhombus or parallelogram sort of shape, with quite a fine bite, and a light oniony taste. Fromage Frais is a bit less usual as a crispy snack flavour than the usual sour cream. But not so different really.

Nice and flavourful. The taste is not confined to flavour dust that you can't help licking off immediately; the snack itself seems to be tasty. Taste tester from the New Forest was impressed. Architectural taste tester ate quite a lot. Did we all enjoy this crispy snack? I think we did.

The French decided not so long ago to change the spelling from oignon to ognon.  I think because no-one actually pronounces the i. But in practice it doesn't seem that anyone has paid any attention. possibly it was just une fake news. Which is French for fake news. Just in case you weren't sure.

Lay's Σνακ Δημητριακών Ολικής Αλεσης Sour Cream & Black Pepper

Which appears to mean Lay's whole grain cereal snacks sour cream and black pepper flavour. It's complicated using google translate when you have to use a greek keyboard too. Complicated stuff.

This sort of corrugated or radiator design snack is just like the Marks & Spencer version of this crispy snack (also sour cream and black pepper). Sunchips whole grain snacks are the same shape too. It's obviously a thing.

But why is it a thing? Who decided that whole grain snacks had to be this shape? I imagine we will never find out.

It's not an exciting snack, but somehow you find yourself going back for another. And again. More than once. Because this sour cream and black pepper snack has a nice, gentle flavour, and a pleasant light crunch. Not bad at all. Yes please, I'll have another.

Brought back by Tech taste tester from Cyprus where he was visiting his girlfriend's parents. A good choice.

Carrefour Cracker met Gouda

This crispy snack is called “crackers” I don’t know why. Because on the back of the box it's called a biscuit in French, and actually, in English I would call it a crispy snack, or indeed a cheesy biscuit. It's more of a sort of a biscuit bite than a cracker bite

It's a crunch cheesy bite and very tasty with it. I liked this little box of gouda crackers very much indeed.

Carrefour is of course a French supermarket, with ties to the Netherlands (and Mallorca if nowhere else in Spain), hence the two language labelling.

I can't always tell the difference between cheddar and gouda or emmental once they have been incorporated into a crispy snack (in real life of course it's different).

Carrefour Gaufrettes au Fromage (footballs)

OK, so this is confusing. Carrefour, a great big French supermarket, has produced two different products called Gaufrettes au Fromage. I have taken the liberty of renaming one we have already tried "squares", and I will name this one footballs.

Because one of them is square, and one of them is ball-shaped.

I just love cheese footballs. I really do. They are one of my absolute favourites. And I was pleased to try this French version which I probably picked up at the big Carrefour outside Reims. And if you too like cheese footballs this cardboard box of snacks will please you.

But.... here are two weird things.

Cliffs of Moher taste tester won't try this crispy snack. She says they (they?) don't have them in Ireland and she's not going to start trying them now. Maybe, she temporised, Lidl or Aldi sell this style of snack, but nobody shops at Lidl or Aldi because the Irish don't trust them. OK then.

And, then we have Architectural taste tester, who we have known for a while, but she doesn't comment much. She tried this globe-shaped snack as though she had never seen it before. She savoured it in a suspicious "I don't know what to expect here" sort of a way. She tells me that she had expected it to be sweet and not cheesy. Weird!

Has she never seen the fabulous British cheese footballs which I first wrote about in 2013? Apparently not. However, she really enjoyed this crispy snack, and ate quite a number of crispy little footballs.

Walkers Turkey & Stuffing

Here's another crisp from the Walkers 2018 Christmas multipack.

I don't really understand why some flavours make a great crisp while others don't. But turkey always seems to work very well. Usually a limited edition crisp available at Christmastime (at least in the UK); I wonder if they have turkey crisps all year round in the United States? Of perhaps for thanksgiving? Or maybe not at all. I must interrogate my American friends.

Anyhow, the reluctant taste testers were grateful to Slightly Red Haired Bristolian for purchasing the two Christmas multipacks, and therefore this packet of crisps. Because it's a rather good crisp. The stuffing part of the flavour works as well as the turkey.

Not bad at all and snacked up speedily before lunch.

We did taste test this crisp in December. It just fell to the bottom of the list of crispy snacks I had to write up.

Eat Grub Delicious Insect Snacks Smoky BBQ Crunchy Roasted Crickets

I wasn't at work on my birthday; the Chef and I went out to lunch in the increasingly wonderful Kings Cross in North London. And while I was enjoying a birthday lunch, the reluctant taste testers purchased a delightful present for me. Yes, a BBQ flavour cricket snack.

Hmmn.... I'm not certain that I am ready for insect snacks. Yes, I know they are packed with protein, and yes, I know that people all around the world eat insects on a regular basis. But I'm not sure I can bring myself to be enthusiastic about eating something that isn't a mammal. I don't restrict myself to farm animals as I have eaten several sorts of deer, but I don't do fish or shellfish (or cephalopods). 

Or, apparently, insects.

Ooh dear. I thought this crispy snack smelled of fish food. And worse.. you know if you move something that's been on a shelf for too long, and you see a dead insect? I really couldn't stop myself thinking that's just what this snack looked like. 

So totally not for me. And I don't think for most of the reluctant taste testers. But apparently the boyfriend of taste tester from the New First (and what a nice boy he is) quite enjoyed this snack. And took the remains of the packet home with him.

Vicente Vidal Patatas Fritas Sabor Huevo Frito

Still a Student (although not for much longer) taste tester went to Barcelona and brought us this exciting packet of potato crisps. How nice is that? We don’t see her very often, but when we do she comes bearing packets of crisps.

And, knowing that the reluctant taste testers and I have tried all manner of exotic crispy snacks Still a Student went out of her way to purchase something interesting. Something she felt sure we would not have tried already. And she succeeded there.

Actually, my favourites are nearly always very simple flavours, but that doesn’t stop me encouraging the taste testers to attempt something fancier.

So, what did we think? Well, this is certainly a fabulous crisp. Some of them very large indeed and with a nice crunch. But for me the taste was just plain weird. Fried egg flavour! What?

The saltiness is nice, but the taste of egg is just wrong. And it is a true eggy taste. It's a bit like the lovely bits of black lace around the edge of a properly fried egg (in my view) but this is not right as a crisp flavour.

However, taste tester from the New Forest was very taken. She said she could eat this crisp every day for the rest of her life! It takes all sorts doesn’t it? And it’s not as though no-one else was snacking up these crisps. Because to be honest, most of us felt this flavour was simply too weird.

Since these crisps come from Barcelona they are named in Spanish and, I suppose, Catalan. “Batatas Fritas con Sabora Ovo Frito”.