Ficosota Food Maretti Oven Baked Bruschette Chips Pizza

I saw this little 70g packet of crispy snacks when I ran down the road for the weekend newspapers. I thought we had tried this style of snack before, but I was fairly sure we hadn’t tried Pizza. And, no, we hadn’t.

We’ve tried Maretti Bruschette in Italian Ham, Mixed Vegetables, Mixed Cheese, Roasted Garlic, Mushrooms and Cream, and Spinach and Cheese. All back in 2016 and 17. Back then the maker’s name was Ital. And now here we have Pizza. 

It’s a pity the Pizza flavour isn’t as pizza-y as it might be. But it’s a tasty snack with a good crunch.

The Chef agrees. The taste isn’t quite right. But it’s still a very tasty snack. And I can’t help wondering if it might work very well with a dip.

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 Thai Green Curry Sticky Rice Chips

Here is another packet of crisps selected by the history graduate taste tester. Another packet of "complete dinner flavour" crisps. Thai green curry - I guess that's a flavour - but sticky rice? Surely that's rather more a texture than a flavour?

Does sticky rice taste appreciably different from any other kind of rice (obviously discounting any flavouring which might be added to the rice)? Not being an aficionado of Thai food I can't answer that. But I can report that the taste testers were dubious about sticky rice as a flavour. History graduate taste tester says he usually has jasmine rice anyway.

Having said all that, we quite liked this crispy snack. Quite tasty.

Quite a pleasant light curry taste. But I can't say that I noticed the baked in rice grains. I guess maybe I wasn't expecting that until - too late - I read the packet. The chips are made with rice flour and maize flour, so why the extra rice I wonder?

As so often with a shaped snack there seem to be more broken bits in the packet than you get with a packet of crisps. Or perhaps with a shaped snack the breakages seem to matter more. I'm not sure why but that does seem to be the case.

Pretty green packaging.

Carrefour Frites Salées (Frietjes Gezouten)

I haven't posted any crisps for ten days or so. Unfortunately I spent a week in bed feeling thoroughly miserable, and then we spent 3 days travelling. Neither of those make ideal crisp reporting conditions but naturally once we were on our way I took the opportunity to visit several motorway service stations (and could not resist photographing these amazing new loo doors all covered in foxgloves) and (oh joy!) a French supermarket: Carrefour.

So here is a packet of Carrefour own brand crisps. Or, in fact, not crisps at all but this crispy snack masquerading as chips (or fries). You can see the photo. You know what I mean.

Shiny new loo doors at the motorway service station: amazing eh?

Not a super exciting crispy snack, but at the same time quite acceptable. Of course the chips are made of dried potato and maize flour and are extruded into the chips shape, so they take every opportunity to turn back into a mushy paste and gum themselves to your teeth. But that's what you expect from this kind of snack.

The really odd thing is that the flavour is salt. Just salt. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with that at all. But what you taste is a light salt & vinegar. Very strange because there is no vinegar in the recipe. But the Chef and I both observed this weird phenomenon. Not bad though.

And the simply designed packaging is carefully printed to be readily comprehensible both in France and in the Netherlands. I didn't know that Carrefour operated in the Netherlands but I suppose they must.

M&S Glastonbury Cheddar & Somerset Cider Toasted Stottie Chips

This new offering from the crispy snack development department at M&S sharply divided the reluctant taste testers. The senior tester and the newest tester really liked them a lot, but the tall taste tester and the Dutch taste tester really didn't. And me? I quite like the taste... I just don't think it works as a crispy snack.

I really do wonder how many people work in crisp development for M&S. It seems that the developers never stop. There is always something new for summer, they have crisps for Halloween, and Christmas crisps (or popcorn), and I'm sort of wondering if these Stottie Chips were created for the festival season?

No. I think that would be too much. It's the Cheddar cheese in these chips that comes from Glastonbury. Which is, after all, a real place and not just the venue for a world famous music festival. Pity really; I've noticed that clothing, shoe and handbag companies produce special lines for festivals these days. Why not special crisps?

On this particular day I wanted a crunch with my lunch but I couldn't find the crispy snack I'd first thought of and discovered this new product instead. There weren't very many bags, and they were tucked away on a different shelf to all the other crisps. And in a different shaped bag too.

Perhaps the squarer than usual bag is to protect the little stottie toasts which are biscuity in texture. Of course all crisps break in the packet to a degree but square or oblong snacks look worse when they're broken than the usual potato shape crisps. Or perhaps M&S are simply changing the design of their bags.

I went online to see what I could find out about these crunchy little biscuits. And found an article in The Straits Times. Which is a newspaper based in Singapore of all places. Well, why not? I just wasn't aware that M&S sold food in that part of the world. And then there's a French blog called Carapomme all about Marks & Spencer products. But not a lot else. Once again I am baffled at how hard it is to read about M&S crisps online.

This crunchy snack is a square little biscuit with quite a hard crunch. The cheddar is not immediately obvious in the taste which is amazingly cidery. There's an added zing from the chives too. I like the smell, I like the taste, but as I said before, I'm not certain that this flavour works with a crispy crunch. It really makes me think of a pork dish I used to make. I don't recall the recipe exactly but there was a lot of cider involved.

Stottie cake or stottie bread originated in the North East of England (I read). It was heavy and doughy and called stottie because if you dropped it it would bounce. Maybe. When you see antelope bouncing away from predators in the Kruger National Park or on the plains of the Serengeti (or more likely on the Discovery Channel), what they are doing is stotting. However, none of this erudite research explains why M&S decided to use the name stottie for these crunchy little "toasts".

I can't quite make my mind up here but I don't think Stottie Chips work for me. The Chef didn't like them at all. He found them a bit odd. But some of the reluctant taste testers were very impressed. So give them a try.

M&S Summer of Flavour Purple & Orange Sweet Potato Crisps

I think I need to rein back on the trying weird crisps. There just seem to be so many new not-potato (un-potato?) crisps around at the moment. Many of them part of M&S's Summer of Flavour which also seems to be a great big campaign to encourage more colourful eating which is supposed to be so good for you.

Well, I suppose that's all very fine but I don't think I'm convinced. I really think I prefer real potatoes. I like the taste, the texture, the crunch...

So anyway, here we have a small bag (55g) of sweet potato crisps.

Obviously I know about sweet potatoes being orange. But purple? Really?

Parade.condenast.com calls them a flavourful lavender cousin of the familiar orange variety and directed me to this exciting sweet potato ice cream recipe from Sea Salt with Food. Apart from the fact that the recipe uses cups which I can never get my head around, it does sound rather good and simple to make. I had been thinking about investigating ice cream makers because we go to this amazing restaurant in Italy which has the most fabulous lavender ice cream. It would be fun to try making lavender ice cream, so why not sweet potato while we are about it? Which brings me around in a lavender-coloured circle.

Back to the crisps. I wasn't that impressed. The crunch is very hard, the crisps themselves are very very orange and extremely purple, and the "seasoned with sea salt to bring out the flavour" isn't really salty enough for my taste.

On the other hand other people liked them a lot more than I did and the family vegetarian finished the packet in double quick time.

I am a bit bothered that the packet contains only 71% sweet potatoes. And then sunflower oil and salt. That's it. So 29% is made up of what? There cannot be all that much salt on these not very salty crisps: the bag says 0.34g. The NHS recommends no more than 6g per day for adults so the salt content seems not too bad. But the fat? 15.5g in each packet which is 22% of the recommended daily intake. It seems like a lot more than I was expecting. Maybe I need to read this sort of information more carefully in future.

What bothers me about this is not that I can read the "these crisps really aren't very good for you" information. But that they look a lot better for you than the average packet of salt & vinegar potato crisps. And they don't seem to be after all.

Not really for me. But eaten enthusiastically by others.

Update: fresh new packaging for summer 2015. Doesn't it make last year's design look old fashioned?
These crisps still look pretty but they still have rather a hard crunch. The reluctant taste testers snapped them up but I am still not convinced.

Olu Olu Gourmet Green Plantain Chips

A dear and kind friend gave me this 60g packet of plantain chips back in December. And like the completely chicken fraidy cat that I am I have been shoving the bag to the bottom of my pending crisps bag ever since. However, this week I have tried both kale and beetroot crisps so why not try the plantain while I'm feeling brave?

It seems that Olu Olu Snackeries (great name!) make these plantain chips in Nigeria and then they are marketed by United Tastes of Africa Inc, based in New Jersey, and Yem Yom Ventures (UK) Ltd based in London. Or they might be made by Uplands Flour Mills (Nigeria) Ltd and marketed by Olu Olu Snackeries. It's hard to say.

And the ingredients are green plantain, banane-plantaine (which sounds like the same thing but in french), vegetable oil and salt. So, 100% natural ingredients with no artificial flavours and no artificial preservatives. And made in Nigeria.

But wait! Right down at the bottom below the best before date, almost obscured by the crimped closey bit, the bag also says product of Colombia. So now I'm totally confused. Colombia? Why would a Nigerian firm get their products made in South America?

The chips certainly look like plantain. At least, I never knowingly ate plantain but they certainly look like deep fried slices of giant banana as you can see from the photograph. So I'm guessing that's what plantain looks like. There is a faint taste of ever so slightly salty banana. And a big taste of cooking oil. Quite a hard dull crunch, and it is a pity that so many of the chips are broken. Perhaps that is bound to happen if you import chips from Colombia via Nigeria.

These chips are a tropical gourmet treat. Hand cooked to perfection with a distinctive tantalising flavour. Hum.  I've got to admit I'm not mad keen on these plantain chips. For me they are an acquired taste. Which I have yet to acquire. So. Very sorry kind friend but these are not for me.

Walkers Sunbites Sour Cream (and cracked black pepper) Flavour

Walkers Sunbites are obviously Walkers' healthy option crispy snacks. In fact, they are multigrain crispy snacks and you can't go wrong with multigrain. Especially not 67% wholegrain (unless you are allergic to corn, wheat or oats) which makes them irresistibly crispy. Or so says the packet.

I have to admit they are very tasty. Somehow, and I'm not sure how, Sunbites taste much healthier than most crispy snacks, but there's no denying they are very good. In fact, I was pushed not to finish this 28g packet all at once.

Somehow these are quite different from other crispy snacks. You can see on the packet that they are wavy (not at all like a crinkle crisp) and all speckled with (presumably) the multigrains. I expect the pretty little grasses on the packet are the much-vaunted multigrains but I do hope that the ingredients do not include butterflies or small singing birds Probably not.

• Tiny moments of extraordinary pleasure. 
• Natural flavours that charm your taste buds.
• We insist that Sunbites are made using no artificial colours. flavours or preservative. Insisting on this seems odd - it's as though Walkers are having trouble with argumentative factory workers who want to make Sunbites with artificial ingredients. However, they still manage to make these crisps suitable for vegetarians and with 30% less fat. Although, I can't help wondering 30% less than what exactly?

And once again the mysterious Walkers department for throwing rubbish away in a responsible fashion has come up with a healthy little person throwing their packet away. I suppose it's a healthy person because he/she has a sort of coronel or tiara thingy like the rays of Sunbite sunshine.

As with other sour cream flavour crispy snacks I found the sour cream difficult to identify. But they are very moreish and I would try them again... if I ever get to the bottom of my giant bag of crisps waiting to be tasted that is.

Thanks very much to The Family Vegetarian and the Graffiti Artist for sending a packet of Sour Cream Sunbites as part of my birthday present.