Vico Curly Sweety Cacahuètes caramélisées pointe de sel

The other day the Chef was talking about his childhood drives through France with his parents and his younger brother. Of course that was before the splendid motorway network was built with its service stations full of all sorts of interesting products to buy. He was bemoaning the serious lack of nougat on sale these days. I don’t like nougat myself, but I know a lot of people who love it. And it is disappointing to see shelves which used to be stocked with nougat filled with American sweets instead. There are an awful lot of British crisps on sale too. You know I am always on the lookout for French snacks and not something I could pick up at the local supermarket.

It seems his journeys over the years have been full of nougat, and, what has never been mentioned before, caramel covered peanuts. I couldn’t find any nougat, but I was pleased to find this packet of salted caramel  peanuts. The Chef was not excited. He said it wasn’t what he had meant. Because he meant peanuts with a hard brown coating.

I opened the packet anyway and I think this is a delicious little packet of peanutty goodness. Nice quality peanuts, not small or hard, and slathered in shiny, slightly sticky salted caramel. Yum! Very, very moreish. I ate rather a lot of them.

I put the packet in the kitchen and fancy that, would you believe it, the Chef at quite a lot too.

The packet tells us this was voted product of the year in 2023. I don’t know what the competition or the category was but I can easily see why these yummy peanuts won a prize.

For other Vico Curly products see here, or here. Goodness knows why all their peanut products are called Curly!

Vico Curly Cacahuète

Another purchase from a French motorway service station, this 60g packet calls itself "Format Pause" which roughly translates as break size.

The packet tells me that Curly have made crunchy crispy snacks for more than 50 years: de delicieux produits soufflés et croustillantes, pour des apéritifs conviviaux et des pauses gourmands, depuis plus de 50 ans. What really puzzles me though is that they've called themselves Curly for more than 50 years when the products are not. A little curved perhaps, but not curly.

I bought a massive load of crisps on our way through France. The Chef has described me as rushing into the shops and buying everything in sight. No rushing was involved in my shopping but I confess I didn't always pay very close attention to what I was buying. So I didn't even notice that what I'd bought was not a cheesy maize snack, but a peanutty maize snack instead.

After the initial surprise (I should have noticed really because the flavour "cacahuète" is a bit of a giveaway) I thought these crispy, and quite crunchy, snacks were rather good. The reluctant taste testers at work finished the packet with no trouble at all so I guess they rather enjoyed them too.

A really interesting peanut snack. Very similar texture and crunch to the usual cheesy maize snacks, with brown sprinkles rather than orange flavour dust. You can also buy Curly Les Maxis, Curly Les Minis, and Curly Les Balls. None of them particularly curly. Deary me! Miles Kington, the late lamented godfather of Franglais, must be enjoying this.

In case you feel the need of a Curly website, here it is. Apparently there's a whole Curly community you can join, and even a Curly Bro' University! I'm sorry to say I haven't really investigated. But you may like to.