M Signature Limited Edition Mozzarella & Pesto Hand Cooked Crisps

This packet of crisps was brought into the office by the senior taste tester who I suppose shops at Morrisons.

I don't usually shop there, but I see they do a number of own brand crispy snacks so I might take a bus in a Northerly direction in the not too distant future to see what they have in stock. Or as the TV commercials so odiously put it these days "in store".

So the senior taste tester set out a bowlful of crisps. Some of the the reluctant taste testers really liked this flavour, and some of them didn't.

Someone said they were very good and just exactly like pesto. And someone else said the taste was all chemically and horrible and she didn't like them at all.

I have to admit that to me they tasted so exactly like the brand of pesto I have decided I really dislike that I fall into the not liking them camp. Plus there wasn't much evidence of mozzarella which is a great shame.

Nice looking crisps, good dark golden colour, but a much harder crunch than I was expecting.

It definitely would be worth trying other flavours if I can find them.

Zweifel Merranea Chips Pesto Verde

This is one of the very few offerings from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel that I haven't enjoyed very much: Merranea Chips con olio di oliva.

The back of the packet shows a Tuscan farmhouse (or perhaps it's in Umbria) surrounded by Italian cypress trees. In the foreground there's a pestle and mortar filled with hand made pesto. And on the front it says Italian Taste above an Italian flag. There's definitely an Italian thing going on here.

Well Italian they may be but I'm not too sure about the flavour which is said to be the irresistible taste of summer. Hmmn... parsley and basil with an 'exquisite touch' of olive oil. And very weirdly: coconut fat. There's cheese powder and garlic and other stuff too.

The reluctant taste testers at work were not very enthusiastic and neither was I. True, a bowl of these crisps did get eaten, but no-one was clamouring for seconds.

As usual with Zweifel, the crisps are thinner and finer than you would get from Walkers or Lay's. And usually I rather like that. But the taste (and smell) was kind of a stale version of pesto. So these crisps are not really very nice.

You might like them. We found them disappointing.

ROKA Cheese Crispies Gouda Cheese with Pesto

Last year I wrote about the fantastic ROKA Cheese Crispies. Time now for a quick note on the very fabulous (but perhaps not quite so fantastic as the original) pesto version. The tin I bought came with one baggie of original flavour Crispies, and one baggie of pesto.

I got a tin for the Chef and me for Christmas last year, and several more for Christmas presents, and we ate the original flavour Crispies at once. But we saved the modern pesto version for later... and now we've finished the Pesto Crispies too.

It was always going to be hard for these pesto crispy crunchy biscuity things to compete with one of my very favourite snacks but I have to say these don't do a bad job. Which is pretty amazing as I recently decided I don't actually like pesto.

Light as a feather with a soft crunch that feels just right. Slightly oily but in a good way (I can't explain). Cheesy and pesto-y. Delicious. They fall apart really easily but it doesn't matter. It's fun chasing the crumbs.

I don't know what it is: they're just so good. Highly recommended. 10/10. although you should know that the original flavour rates 11 at least. Possibly more...

Update: the lovely people at ROKA sent me a food parcel because they read how much I love their Cheese Crispies. How generous is that? And a packet of Cheese Crispies with Pesto was included.

As the Chef and I had already tried some of these I ripped open this packet for the reluctant taste testers at work. So not long past 9 o'clock yesterday morning instead of having breakfast we were all snacking on these superb cheesy snacks. And everyone agreed they are simply delicious. The pesto flavour, it was agreed, seems to be more of a hint of pesto than a great big wallop of flavour, but this was felt to be a good thing. And then everyone greedily had another, and possibly another.  There weren't many crumbs but they were very soon hoovered up.

So a great big thank you to ROKA. And more exciting reviews to come because my food parcel was huge! And many thanks also to the Netherlands postal service who delivered my parcel amazingly quickly. Who knew I was an internationally renowned food writer eh?

Kettle Chips Mozzarella & Pesto

It says here on the package that Mozzarella & Pesto is a seasonal flavour. I checked on the website and it is; a special flavour for summer. So it's a bit odd that I never noticed these crisps until October. However, the bright green packet is very cheerful and summery, and extremely welcome on a dreich day like today.

These are pretty good for a (presumably) limited edition season crisp. Good crunch and texture, really large crisps, lots of flavour dust, good colour with little herby bits of basil and parsley. In fact I think they rate a "yum".

I bought these to try because I love mozzarella (if I get grossly fat one of the reasons will probably be overindulging in this superb cheese) and I wanted to see how the guys at Kettle managed to get a crisp to taste of mozzarella. I think they've done a pretty good job. I can't really find a way of describing it but there really does seem to be a mozzarella taste. The pesto part of the taste doesn't strike me as being particularly pesto-y although Lauren at work disagrees with me here. She was very impressed at the size: "is this all one crisp?" she wondered, carrying off what looked like an A4 slice of kettle fried potato. I wasn't fussed that the crisps don't seem to taste of pesto because in fact I don't care for it much.

You know, I always thought I liked pesto. But every time I ate it I ended off a little dissatisfied and not very happy with my dinner. It seems to work fairly OK in a sandwich with a load of other flavours but after yet another unsatisfactory pesto & pasta dinner I decided I don't like pesto much. So I'm not going to buy it again.

So not a very pesto-y taste, but at the same time an extremely tasty, in fact yummy, taste and I would be happy to recommend these to anyone who fancies the idea.

These crisps are hand cooked using traditional methods, are suitable for vegetarians, and contain no artificial ingredients. They do contain dried whey (from milk), dried buttermilk (from milk), dried mozzarella cheese (from milk), dried cheese (from milk), dried butter (from milk), and dried cream (from milk). And then the ingredients list says: contains milk. So if you have a problem with milk probably these are best avoided.

The Kettle Chips company was sold to a private equity group called Lion Capital LLP in 2006. According to Wikipedia there was a scandal involving water pollution in California (2008), and union busting issues in the UK (2007). Since 2010 the company has been owned by Diamond Foods which suffered an accounting scandal in 2012. This is a shame because the original Kettle Chips company used green energy and won awards for environmental design. I'd rather buy crisps from an environmentally friendly company than one that... well, they don't have a very good reputation.