M&S Rainbow Veggie Tasters

I finally found what my local branch of M&S did with their crispy snacks. Hidden round where they used to sell frying pans. Perhaps they have a healthy eating plan for customers which involves buying fewer crisps because we can’t find them; although maybe not producing any might work better.

We know M&S make fabulous cheesey puffs (slightly confusingly called cheese tasters), and here they have produced a vegetable version, a rainbow veggie version. Beetroot and goats cheese. Carrot and cumin. Spinach and black pepper. Quite complicated flavours.

And not maize but rice snacks. Baked not fried. But that’s the way things are these days; we aren’t allowed to have unhealthy fried stuff. More's the pity.

Not sure this crispy snack is really to my taste. I did eat the whole (quite small) packet but I’m not sure I would buy another.

Co-op Fine Foods Vegetable Chips

When the Chef & I were in Switzerland we were invited to supper with a French (actually from Alsace so possibly German) friend and her son who is half Corsican. Both of them spend a lot of time in Switzerland, and both of them spend a lot of time in Peru where they run trekking holidays which I suspect are not for the faint hearted or the dilettante tourist. And I wouldn't be able to cope at all because so much of Peru is very high and I am not at my best at altitude.

If you had asked me to name anyone who wouldn't eat crisps I would have bet on Alsatian friend. And I would have been quite wrong. Because she introduced us to a fine packet of vegetable crisps from the Co-op. And very nice too.

In fact, not just very nice but delicious. Once again I'll remind you that I don't normally buy vegetable crisps as potato crisps keep me plenty busy, but in this case I think I would make an exception. And anyway the Chef liked them so much he went out and bought 2 more packets so we could try them again.

Parsnip (weirdly called panais in French), sweet potato, carrot and beetroot.  And I enjoyed them all. As always a duller crunch than you get from a potato crisp but not too dull, and really, very tasty.

Pret a Manger Vegetable Crisps Parsnip, Sweet Potato & Beetroot

I don't normally buy vegetable crisps because there are simply so many potato snacks of all kinds that life seems too short to branch out into vegetable snacks. I mean, I've posted about 800 mostly potatoey crispy snacks. Seriously 800? That seems an awful lot doesn't it?

Yup. Just boasting. And you know what? I really haven't scratched the surface of available crispy snacks.

Well, I may not buy vegetable based crispy snacks but Tall Elegant taste tester doesn't follow my rules and she picked up this packet when she rushed out to Brent Cross at lunchtime. You've got to eat lunch after all, and I was pleased to try a sample of her choice.

I think I tried a bit of parsnip. It was wonderfully tasty. Nicely crunchy and pleasantly salted. Very nice indeed. And Tall Elegant taste tester thought this was a pretty good packet of (not actually) crisps.

Pret a Manger crisps are usually vepppaand (what do you suppose my iPad meant here? I have forgotten what I wrote yesterday and am quite baffled at this weird word!) Tall Elegant taste tester and I decided this was no exception. (No. No clue what we decided.)

Well, baffled by the above I may be, but there's still time to tell you that the packaging here is tip top. Very simple, very clever. Very handsome snail.

Leighton Brown Beetroot Horseradish & Dill Crisps

I wasn't sure how the reluctant taste testers were going to react to this little packet of beetroot crisps. Or the flavour either: horseradish and dill. Frankly I wasn't sure about the flavour. Because although I like dill I really don't fancy horseradish and will got to great lengths to avoid it.

But, actually this was something of a success. A very nice crunch, quite a genuine beetroot taste and the added flavour is rather tasty. Not particularly horseradish, and I couldn't pick the dill flavour. Slightly Red Haired Bristolian taste tester tells us her grand father is a champion beetroot grower so she is something of an expert on this dark red root and I think she was pretty happy with this crispy snack. Even Nobel Friend who claims she dislikes beetroot and never eats it, said she liked it a lot. 

We never ever had beetroot at home when I was growing up. My mother had taken a grave dislike to it after being forced to eat fruit salads made with beetroot during WWII. If like me you rather like beetroot but don't have a history of cooking with it, you might like to take a look at the 10 best beetroot recipes from The Guardian website. 

I never heard of Leighton Brown before but I gather they make 3 different vegetable crisps (that is, not made from potatoes). Nice crisps and wonderful packaging design.

And thinking of beetroot, here's a rather wonderful beetroot and lemon ravioli from the M&S deli counter. Yum!

M&S Beetroot Vinaigrette Crisps

M&S Beetroot Vinaigrette Crisps. Crunchy dried beetroot slices with a vinaigrette seasoning. One of your five a day.

My goodness. These crunchy slices of beetroot crisp are very very crunchy indeed. And purple? Probably the most purple thing you could possibly imagine in the crispy crunch department. And in fact pretty purple in general.

These beetroot crisps have a very beetrooty flavour, so not suitable for anyone searching for a healthy crisp but they don't actually enjoy beetroot. Some of the crisps taste purely of beetroot while others are flavoured with the lemony garlic vinaigrette.

I quite like the earthy taste of beetroot. This is possibly because it was never forced on me when I was a child; my mother had far too much of it in WWII and never ate it unless she absolutely had to. She said beetroot in fruit salad was a memory too ghastly to contemplate and to be honest I can't really blame her. So I understand it isn't to everyone's taste. And I do rather wonder how popular these are going to be. Still, M&S obviously think they're on to a good thing with their new healthy range of crispy things so I guess we'll see.

One of my work colleagues bought these and then decided they weren't really her thing. She put a bowl in the kitchen for the reluctant taste testers to sample and they don't seem to have been mad keen either.

I think I rather prefer my crispy snacks to be made of potato or maize but for a real change these are quite interesting. I don't think I could eat a whole 60g packet on their own but maybe they would work well as part of a salady supper with houmous or tzatziki.

Tesco Finest Hand Cooked Mature Devonshire Cheddar & Festive Beetroot Chutney

Here's another exotic crisp from the Tesco finest Christmas range. Another crisp which sounds as though it comes from a Michelin starred restaurant rather than from a supermarket.

The packaging tells me I have a bag of Mature Devonshire Cheddar & Festive Beetroot Chutney Crisps, and then the subtitle (as it were) says tangy cheese and earthy chutney with a hint of chilli and Brazilian orange.

Well! And as you can see from the photograph the crisps are an interesting mottled red. Most of the red seems to be flavour dust. You can lick it off. But there are orange bits as well which seem to be actually part of the crisp. I think there's more of a hint of orange. And I wonder why it is Brazilian orange rather than any other?

I'm not sure I can detect any beetroot in the flavour but the orange is very definite. Of course beetroot and orange go well together. I used to have a very good recipe for baked beetroot with orange juice and cheese. Delicious.

I notice that sugar is first on the list of seasoning ingredients which is no surprise; these are rather sweet crisps. In fact, the flavour reminds me of - well I'm not quite sure  - maybe a cheesecake mix or perhaps the beginnings of a cake with the sugar creamed into the butter and orange zest folded in.

And here's an odd ingredient: mushroom powder. What do you suppose that contributes to the mix? Oh and the chillis are grown at the South Devon Chilli Farm.

Once again we know that the potato variety is Lady Rosetta and the field they were grown in is River Peace. In Devon. I think another of the Tesco crisps were grown in that field. These crisps are suitable for vegetarians and contain no artificial flavours, colours or MSG. And many of the ingredients come from... Devon.

A very unusual crisp in flavour and colour. The crunch is perhaps a little more crunchy than the other Tesco Finest I have tried but still very good. The cheesiness is far more in the background than I was expecting but none the worse for that. They're really different.

And once again, although I find I quite like these crisps I don't want to eat an entire packet. I think perhaps it's because the flavour is too busy. Returning to the Michelin star restaurant analogy, I've never really wanted to eat in one because when I've looked at the menus the food all looks much too complicated. These crisps are too complicated for me!

Very handsome packaging though. A lovely soft beetroot red fading into brown at top and bottom.