M&S Scottish Langoustines with Dill & Lemon

Well these hand cooked crisps from the new M&S summer 2015 range turned out to be amazingly popular with the reluctant taste testers. Amazingly popular.

I bought a packet yesterday but then put it in a food parcel to post to a friend in the United States (where obviously you can't purchase such luxuries), so bought another packet today at lunchtime and put out a bowl for the taste testers. And as the bowl was completely emptied before the senior taste tester returned from a site visit I put out some more.

Whoosh! All gone in no time at all. I confess I was quite surprised.

I was also surprised that these crisps not only contain prawns but actual langoustines "fished from Scottish waters". And real dill and lemon. So, you know, these are real langoustine flavour crisps. (I know: I'm suspicious. But so often crisp flavours seem to be manufactured out of dairy products and wheat. Or some combination equally unrelated to the flavour you are supposed to be enjoying.)

The potatoes are called Taurus and were grown in Herefordshire. The packet tells us that M&S crisps use a selection of varieties. It seems that they choose a different variety depending on the season.

The aroma on first opening the bag is quite sea-foody but the taste is really more crisp with dill and lemon. Quite a gentle taste. Mostly smaller than I was expecting, the crisps have a great crunch and a nice golden colour. The taste testers all liked these a lot and had many good things to say about them.

I don't eat sea food but (despite sea food anxiety) I quite liked them too. The lemon and the dill are really very nice. It's a great combination.

Brand new taste tester at work who hasn't had time to get used to free crisps in the office at the drop of a hat said langoustines are her absolute favourite food and she liked these crisps a lot. And that has to be a seal of approval.

The new summer selection of crisps are all part of a Tastes of the British Isles range. It's so new I haven't had time to investigate properly. But these crisps represent Scotland. Where my surname comes from. Even if I don't.

Kettle Chips Sea Salt with a Hint of Citrus Lemon

Interesting isn't it how citrus flavours are making their way into so many crisps?

Over the last year or so I've tried Lemon Harissa from M&S, Lime & Pink Peppercorn from San Carlo, Chilli & Lemon from Cofresh, another Chilli & Lemon this time from Kolak, and Sea Salt & Lemon Vinaigrette from M&S. And I've rather enjoyed all of them especially the last which was the first citrus flavoured crisp I bought.

I don't know how the trend started. In fact, I have no idea how food trends start; all I know is that they do. So suddenly every restaurant has ox cheek and pork belly on the menu; everyone you know is mad about cupcakes (although they are a  little bit 2013) and looks rather sneery at you when you admit the last time you baked cupcakes was in the 1980s; or you accidentally buy olive bread when you wanted plain because the shelf was crammed with olive or walnut or chilli breads.

I would need a flavour forecaster to explain to me how trends work (and just how do you become a flavour forecaster I wonder?) but sadly I don't know one. I have read a little online but although it appears the cupcake trend began because Sex and the City was so popular, mostly it seems that with a little bit of this and a little bit of that all thrown up in the air at once the flavour forecaster looks at what comes down again and makes a prediction about what will be popular in the coming year.

So what was forecast for 2014? Here are a few things I found in an article on the Guardian website:

• kale ice lollies - here's the website 
• savoury yoghurt: carrot, tomato, parsnip and beetroot - apparently they're a "thing" in New York
• insect bars: made with cricket flour - bound to be gluten free - and flavoured with chocolate, peanut butter, coconut, ginger and lime. Oh dear, I'm not sure about the packaging
• beef, turkey and bison protein bars
• and er edible wood. 

Coming soon to a supermarket near you? I'm not sure. It's June now so only 6 months to go to see if any of these predictions is correct. And no mention of citrus crisps. Well, I expect they're a bit too normal and everyday for this list.

Anyhow, back to my packet of crisps from the local branch of Waitrose. Nice crunch, good golden colour which doesn't show up in my photograph, very crispy (you can smell that they're fried not baked) and slightly citrusy aroma, and a good salty lemony taste. Quite a lot of flavour dust. But, and it is a bit but, these hand cooked crisps are rather greasy. It's a shame because otherwise they qualify for a very good.

M&S Summer of Flavour Hand Cooked Lemon Harissa Potato Crisps

Mmmm. Not sure that these crisps don't qualify for a yum. Yes, I think they do: yum.

After trying beetroot and kale crisps in quite succession it's good to get back to the traditional yumminess of potato. And the flavour here is very nice. Although some of the crisps are a little more flavoured than others. Which means really rather hot.

These crisps are large at the top of the bag and get smaller the lower you go. But that's chaos theory for you - or have I got that back to front? Anyway, they're quite strong with a hearty crunch, as so often with hand cooked crisps, and there's not too much breakage which is good. And there's quite a lot of flavour dust which is the rich orange of paprika and cloves.

Harissa is a Tunisian or Moroccan spicy paste mostly made with chillis, garlic and olive oil, plus a selection of spices which usually include caraway and coriander. The various recipes I've read online are all different and usually feature instructions such as "you can add [another ingredient] if you like". And the M&S crisp development team appear to have added a whole swathe of [another ingredient]s to create this very tasty flavour. So we have onions, garlic, tomatoes, red peppers, black pepper, cumin, and lemon (but no caraway or coriander). And also yeast extract which I'm pretty sure is not an authentic North African ingredient and rice flour. I've seen rice flour as a crisp ingredient before and I have no clue what it's for.

These crisps taste great and smell good too. For some reason a good taste does not always come with a good aroma (or vice versa), but here you get them both. Lots of good heat and a great zing of lemon. Very nice. And suitable for vegetarians.

And I love the packaging too. The lemon yellow bag (all yellow on the reverse apart from the blocks of text) is bright and summery and the Summer of Flavour logo is very attractive.

But the packaging has a great big recycling symbol on it and a smaller logo with a note that says film - plastics not currently recycled. So which is it? Maybe if I had a smartphone I could scan the square scanny thing and that would give me more information. Maybe not. In the meantime into the bin it goes.

Oh, and I quite forgot. This is a new flavour for summer 2014. The summer of flavour. Which sounds great doesn't it? But bizarrely if you search summer of flavour on the M&S website you get 122 products across 36 categories of which 199 products are wine (or beer or cider) and 39 are clothes. Yes, I know that sum doesn't add up but even if my maths isn't too good I'm not far off. And obviously these crisps are not on the list at all (unless they come under men's hats gloves and scarves, or boys' formalwear). Sigh. Why is it so difficult to search online for M&S crisps?

Cofresh Chilli & Lemon Flavour Potato Grills

The nice newsagent at the bottom of our road sold me these crisps when I was adding credit to my Oystercard. They stock a slightly random selection of small bags of crisps and I never know what I will see next. But I really like that the packets are all small. This bag is 28g which turns out to be very slightly less than 1oz. A tiny amount of crisps so you don't feel too ghastly guilty about eating them all.

Really the way the supermarkets sell crisps does annoy me. Huge great big sharing bags or even huger multi packs of 6 or 8 or 10 bags of something. And what if you only want one small bag? Apparently they don't really care. And then we wonder why everyone is getting so fat.

So anyway, I'd not heard of Cofresh before but they appear to be based in Leicester (in the UK) and sell their products in the United States, Australia and New Zealand (from the nutritional facts / information printed on the bag), and France, Germany, Spain, and The Netherlands (from the languages the ingredients are printed in).  The oh so helpful internet tells me that Cofresh is the UK's leading Asian snack business. So good for them. And the Cofresh website tells me there are plenty of crispy snacks for me to try if I can find them.

I've called these crisps but I suppose it's more of a crispy snack. And weirdly they look like armadillos. Yes, all right, I expect it's only me but you know I can't help it.

Quite an unusual mixture of hard crunch and soft crunch - it depends on whether you're biting into a thick bit or not - with a delicate spicy taste. There's more flavour on some of the grills than on others, and you can see that some of them have a lot more orangey brown flavour dust than others. The smell is really nice and I think the label "Tangy" on the front of the packet is about right. I was pleased the spiciness was as mild as advertised and I really like these.

The packaging is pretty too. I like the yellow paisley pattern. Just going downstairs to check on the taste again... mmmn yes, very nice. Quite hot but not too hot and the lemon really works well. I'm enjoying these with a glass of Swiss wine.

Kolak Hot & Spicy Crisps Chilli & Lemon Flavour

So I went to the inefficient local post office to send a package of discarded Marcus Didius Falco books by Lindsey Davis (I had two of each) to my brother who reads them too, and suddenly noticed they have a limited supply of crisps on sale.

Maybe I'm really unobservant and it's only recently that I've noticed this - or maybe it's a new departure - but I find that quite a lot of local shops sell crisps on a shelf about knee high. It's not normally where I look but silly me. Evidently I've been missing out because look here; the post office sells crisps I've not seen before. And in small 28g bags too.

I don't know Kolak Snack Foods but they appear to be based in North West London, which as luck would have it, is where I live. Pretty much. Not terrifically impressed with their website which seems to be full of broken links, and at the same time under construction, but the crisps are OK.

The crisps are quite small, finer than average for these days and with a light crunch. And I was sorry to see that there was quite a lot of breakage but that doesn't affect the taste. The colour is a much darker orange than the photograph shows. That'll be the chilli powder and paprika. And the chilli and lemon flavour? Amazing.

I didn't finish the packet because these crisps really are very hot and spicy and I found them a little bit too spicy for my taste. But I tried them out on the reluctant taste testers at work and apart from the senior taste tester (founder member of the crisp club) everyone seemed to approve. Even the extremely picky tall taste tester gave them 10/10.

Lovely chilli flavour and lots of lemon too. Well done. Yes, we approve.

M&S Ever So Posh Hand Cooked Sea Salt and Lemon Vinaigrette

Another crunch at lunch choice from Marks & Spencer; I quite often get these classy crisps. 

Remember a few years back when sea salt and black pepper seemed such a swanky new crisp flavour? No longer I'm afraid. Everyone makes them now and that makes them just as ordinary as plain old salted - the very first flavour (don't forget those twists of blue paper crisp fans). So anyway, you've got to have something new as a basic and this seems to be M&S's ever so posh choice. 

I really do recommend these. The flavour is quite sharp - but no surprise there; that's what you expect from a lemon vinaigrette. And actually this is a good thing for me because I can't eat very many at once. So a packet will last me all week. Or longer. So my high salt, probably very high fat, snack at lunchtime gets eeked ( fourth time lucky getting the iPad to accept that word) out making it less drastically unhealthy.

As well as the taste I love the packaging. The matte brown package is very handsome indeed, and perhaps even posh. And very nice too.

Verdict? 10/10.