Waitrose All Butter Cheddar Cheese & Chilli Bites

 

This is a very tasty little cheesy bite, with a kick of chilli to liven it up. Very nice.

It has occurred to me that the British palate has changed enormously over the last 20 years. I can’t help feeling that not so long ago these cheese and chilli bites might have been considered very much too hot. These days I suspect they are acceptable to all the world and his grandmother. We are all eating a lot more chilli, and even the most conservative cook thinks nothing of throwing a pinch (minimum) of chilli flakes into the spaghetti bolognaise.

Lovely texture, very nice bite, good cheesy taste and that little kick of chilli. I really enjoyed these.

Interesting. In the past I think these cheesy bites might have been packaged in a silver plastic baggie inside the cardboard box. You can see that this baggie is clear. Maybe the clear bag breaks down more quickly?

Lorenz Pomsticks Paprika flavour

Here’s another packet of crispy snacks that I found in our local Turkish shop. They have an amazing array of different brands that can’t always be found anywhere else.

PomSticks, or as we called them when I was a child, chipples, are a tasty way to eat finely chopped and deep fried potatoes. And if I remember correctly, my brother and I learned to eat chipples in Edinburgh, in about 1963. So this style of crispy snack has been around for quite a while.

And this packet of “chipples” is a very tasty example of finely chopped deep fried potatoes. Very nice indeed. 

It tastes nicely of something or other, I couldn’t work out what, but I wasn’t really bothered. But tasty.

If I had bothered to read the label (sorry, I didn’t) I would have known the taste was paprika. Really? I’m not sure I could taste paprika. They don’t seem to taste particularly paprika-y. Whatever it was tasted quite good, so we’ll stick with that.

Here’s another Lorenz crispy snack.

Jacob’s Cheddars Red Leicester

Oh dear. I have enjoyed Cheddars for a long time. Delicious. Although I am surprised to find that I don’t seem to have reviewed them. How odd.

I have also enjoyed many bags of Mini Cheddars in various flavours*. Mostly delicious but smaller. So I was interested to try full size Red Leicester Cheddars.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Red Leicester is a red coloured cheese originally made in Leicester. I believe it works very well in sandwiches. 

However, and I am very sorry to have to report this, Red Leicester Cheddars aren’t a good idea. Same size as your classic Cheddars, same packet of biscuits style packaging, very nearly the same ingredients I expect, but and it is a very big but, they don’t really taste of anything. 

They have just the right crunch and snap, and feel the same in my mouth, but the taste is very disappointing. I am disappointed. I feel there is no real discernible taste of cheese.

*that’s four different posts about Cheddars for your delectation and delight.

Well, just my opinion because there’s no one here to ask their opinion now.

Lay’s Tomato flavoured

And… here we are again. This time with a tomato flavoured crisp from Lay’s which I think started life in Poland. It seems likely that this product was not originally intended to be sold in the UK, but I bought the packet in my local Turkish shop here in North London. According to the lists of ingredients, you should be able to find these crisps in PL, HU, CZ, SK, LT, LV, EE, HR and SI. 

The packaging of all sorts of products, from potato crisps to shampoo, is an interesting way to learn foreign languages. In this case though, there is no list of ingredients in any language that I actually speak. Sadly I have no knowledge of Hungarian or Lithuanian. Or even Polish. How careless of me. So the information on this packet isn’t going to act as a Rosetta Stone for me today. It’s a pity because I find the differences (and similarities) between languages fascinating.

However, the front of this packet is prominently labelled in English, so that’s a fairly big clue.

OK, so this is a tomato flavoured potato crisp. The crisps are finely cut, maybe that’s the Polish preference? And they do taste fairly tomatoey.

But once again, I have here a crisp which is perfectly edible, but to me at least, tastes far too sharp to accurately give us crisp fans a genuine taste of the advertised flavour.

Not bad. But… No, I mean, it’s not a bad crisp but I think tomato is a surprisingly difficult flavour to get right.