Kambly Apérifeuilles Nature (+ recipe for Sour Cream & Chive Dip)

And here’s another apéro snack from Kambly, and as usual it comes in a silver baggie inside a cardboard box. It looked nice on the packet but when the Chef and I first tried this crispy snack we thought we’d made a mistake. It’s a bit dull.

Sometimes nature indicates a ready salted sort of flavour. Sometimes it’s more of a nothing. And despite the good crunch this crispy snack could do with a bit of assistance.

In the U.K. I would usually make tracks for the nearest supermarket and reach for a sour cream and chive dip. Sadly, here we are in beautiful Switzerland, social distancing in the time of Coronavirus, and although we can shop for food the bad news is that tasty dips are a bit thin on the ground. We have never seen a dip intended to be eaten with a crispy snack in Switzerland. Odd eh? Especially as the Swiss are quite keen on crispy snacks.

So not wanting to waste this leaf-shaped snack I looked online and decided to make my own dip.

There are a load of dip recipes available online. Some are as basic as chop a bunch of chives and mix into sour cream. Others are considerably more complicated and lots include mayonnaise which isn’t the same here as it is at home. So I did a little reading and a bit of thinking and came up with my own concoction.

2 spoons sour cream (or soured cream)
3 spoons Greek yogurt
A bunch of chives chopped small or snipped with kitchen scissors
A small clove of garlic chopped small
Lemon juice, about a teaspoon
Lemon zest... a little bit: see how much you think
Salt & Pepper to taste
And a teaspoon of sugar

I used a pudding spoon instead of a cup as my basic measure. I wasn’t at all sure this would taste good so I didn’t make too much to start with. This dip tastes ok when it’s freshly made but whole a lot better after a night in the fridge, and better again the next day. None of the recipes I read mentioned that important detail. But this snack plus 2 day old (matured) dip works very well indeed.

The packaging recommends you try this crispy snack with trout mousse or “whipped trout”. Trout is just about my least favourite fish and my friends know I don’t eat any fish (except smoked salmon which is different) for fun. So can you imagine how thrilled I was when a close relation who has known me my entire life gave me a smoked trout roulade for Christmas one year?  But if you are a fish fan perhaps the trout mousse suggestion might work for you.

Kambly Mini-Twist

Here’s a slightly crunchy, very buttery, mini twist of deliciousness. This Swiss crispy snack, which is also available in the EU, is slightly crumbly but not so much you end up with crumbs down your front (often my fate: just imagine). As so often with an apéro type snack it comes inside a silver baggie in a cardboard box.

Enjoy with a glass of wine, or maybe for breakfast?

Once again a crispy snack that seems a bit dull at first and then turns out to be the tastiest thing on the planet. I ate most of the packet (but it took me at least a week) before I remembered to take a photo.

Kambly ApériSticks Kartoffel & Rosmarin

The Chef and I have tried a couple of Kambly crispy snacks before, but this one is new (neu/nouveau) so we hadn’t seen a packet before.

Potato and rosemary eh? Shades of the late lamented crisps from Marks & Spencer: Reduced Fat Buttered Baked Potato which astonishingly really tasted of buttery baked potatoes.

I am absolutely not convinced you can taste any potato in this snack, and the rosemary is quite gentle but they do taste quite buttery (even though I’m not sure there is any butter in the recipe.). A nice crunch, and a subtle taste is rather undermined by the pale uncooked colour which is a shame because actually this is  not a bad snack. It’s just that we are conditioned to expect a brown colour to indicate a cooked and crunchy snack. And this is cooked and crunchy while remaining pale.

This was the Chef’s main gripe. “A bit pale”, he opined.

Anya Hindmarch: Anya Brands Walkers Clutch Cheese & Onion

Not a packet of crisps at all, but an astonishingly fabulous clutch from British handbag designer Anya Hindmarch. The design of course is taken from the classic (possibly even iconic) Walkers Cheese and Onion crisp packet all decked out in sequins and jewels. Wow! What more could the true crisp fan ask for?

Unfortunately because this bag is so fabulous it is also rather expensive. So I haven’t got one, and I honestly don’t think I could justify buying one. Especially as I don’t exactly frequent the sort of fancy function where you might carry a bag like this. However, a girl can dream.

So why not take yourself over to anyahindmarch.com and check out her other gorgeous bags. Or her slightly more affordable leather stickers (look under accessories).

This design is in blueberry. The bag also comes in dark teal (salt & vinegar), black (barbecue), and magenta (prawn cocktail).

Photo ©️Anya Hindmarch

Carrefour Petites Crêpes Fourées Goût Bacon

Another own brand crispy snack from Carrefour, another French (slash Belgian) snack flavoured with bacon. Which is always a bit of a surprise. Yes, in case you hadn't noticed, bacon is apparently French for bacon. I have actually seen proper chefs talking about “le bacon” on French tv.

And there really is bacon in this tasty apéro snack so of course it’s not suitable for vegetarians. Although actually, the creamy bacony stuffing is a bit too tasty for me, but there you are. I’m not sure I like it that much.

And there’s another problem for me. I really don’t like this little miniature stuffed “crepe”. For some reason the shape disgusts me. Now, I’m sure this is just me being weird. But it does stop me feeling I can recommend them to you. Make no mistake; I thought the picture on the packet looked like a tasty snack. It’s just when I started to taste them. I think they’re too small. Too odd.

Carrefour Crêpettes Fourrage au Roquefort, is also a Carrefour own brand product as you can see, and looks very similar (but weirdly with a rather different name) and I have to admit I really couldn’t fancy the shape/size/style of that snack either.

Odd. And you know what? For the first time in a long time I didn’t want to finish the packet.

What a pity.

Les Recettes Belin Pita Crack’s Herbes de Provence & Huile d’Olive Vierge Extra

Ski Instructor and Tractor Fan Taste Testers drove down through France to stay with me and the Chef and brought this little packet of triangular pitta chips with them. Unfortunately, they managed to finish the whole packet before I got a look in. And threw the packet away before I had a chance to photograph it! However, luckily we have quite a clean bin, and it was easy to fish the packet out.

I didn’t have the chance to assess the crunch or the taste of these little crackers, but I can tell you the remaining dust and crumbs at the bottom of the bags smell pretty good. The herbes de Provence; rosemary, thyme, marjoram and savoury (also known as the herb of love apparently), probably made this rather a tasty snack.

The Chef tells me he managed to snaffle one and thought the taste was nice, but a bit herby for his taste, and the bite rather hard. 

Not sure that using extra virgin olive oil in the recipe would make a better cracker or pitta chip than the ordinary stuff. But who knows?

Grizzy and the Lemmings: Crunch Yeah

This top quality (and amazingly violent in a jolly fashion) Canadian animation is about a grizzly bear who moves into a park ranger’s house as soon as the ranger leaves - perhaps he goes home to visit his mum? we never find out - and a slice or gang of out of control lemmings determined to invade his space and destroy his peace. [Numerous online sources assure me that slice really is the word for a group of lemmings but I confess I really find this quite hard to believe.]

Grizzy mostly eats salmon (he also watches what looks like Salmon TV), and a Nutella-style spread called Yummy; sometimes he spreads Yummy on his fish. The lemmings love speed, and anything bouncy (or disco), and will do anything including destroying the entire planet for a jar of Yummy but they are also pretty keen on the would-be Cheesy Wotsit (or Cheeto) crispy snack Grizzy sometimes eats: it’s called Crunch Yeah.

This rather bad snap of Grizzy vaulting upside down to escape some ghastly fate shows a packet of Crunch Yeah tucked into his belt.Which is interesting as Grizzy never normally wears a belt.

If any crispy snack entrepreneur is thinking of launching a new Wotsit style corn puff type of snack I can’t help feeling that “Crunch Yeah” wouldn’t be a bad name. I would probably buy a packet. I think maybe the reluctant taste testers might too. I might suggest calling it Crunch Yeah! though. I feel an exclamation mark might help the marketing.

I have struggled to find a scene to grab a shot of the Crunch Yeah snack but if you know what Wotsits or Cheetos look like you will know just what I’m talking about, and here’s a photo of some M&S Cheese Tasters (very similar in style) just in case you don’t.

Sadly only ever seen on French TV.