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The Taste Test: Mint Tea

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So, I don’t actually drink tea or coffee. I know, I know. However, inconveniently I am also the coldest human in the world. I am always freezing, and if I had my choice I’d live in rooms heated to sauna levels. Whenever the uninitiated walk into our flat they are always horrified by how oppressively hot I keep it. This means that in air-conditioned offices, where other people get to set the temperature to average human levels, I have to wrap myself in a blanket to keep at a stage above hypothermia. Ideally I would be one of those people who sets up an IV drip of tea throughout the day. But I hate tea. It’s just like dirty water, I don’t get it. So occasionally, when it’s really grim, I resort to mint tea. Which is more bearable.

All of this, I realise, is a very bad way of starting off a Taste Test post about tea. What I am basically saying is that I don’t like tea and I am a bad person to recommend what type you buy. Look at it like this: I have no tea loyalty or preconceptions or ideas about what brands are good. It’s like a virgin tea palette. I assumed I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them. Surprisingly, I was wrong.

Also, as you will see, the nutritional content table is basically non-existent this time. Because it’s pretty much just water. And the prices per 100g are really high because you never buy tea per 100g – a normal box is about 30g or something.

As before, I feel I need a rambling disclaimer: obviously, I am doing this in my kitchen and not in a lab and I am not a scientist. These are the opinions of one person – that said, one person who has been trained to taste for quality. Also, the products used in this series are just examples – obviously each supermarket has, say, eight or nine different types of tea or whatever the product may be, and I’m not going to try every single one because what am I, made of money?

Finally, I should highlight that I tasted all the products blind, and at the time of tasting and making my notes I didn’t know which product came from which shop. I sat in one room while my glamorous assistant (er, my husband), prepared the samples in another. Any notes added regarding packaging and so on were only done after blind tasting, when I learned which who had made product A, B, C, D, or E.

The Blind Taste Test: Mint Tea

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Mint Tea
per 100g
£
Twinings
3.10
Waitrose Moroccan Mint
7.90
Teapigs
10
Diplomat Aldi
1.25
Tesco
1.98
Sainsbury’s
1.90

A – Sainsbury’s – 3/10

  • Doesn’t actually taste much like mint. A little on the aftertaste, but not so much on the drinking. Also a little artificial and plastic-y. Leaves you with a not particularly pleasant toothpaste kind of feeling.

B – Teapigs – 6/10

  • Immediately smells more minty than A. This comes through on the taste – you have the tingle of mint on your tongue. Definitely more enjoyable but not exactly great.

C – Twinings – 7/10

  • A bit of a mint scent, though not as strong as B. However, more flavour on the taste – less just like water. A little more enjoyable.

D – Tesco – 7/10

  • A different smell to the others – slightly sweeter. A more rounded taste – less like mouthwash than some of the others. Probably my favourite.

E – Waitrose – 4/10

  • A very unusual smell, not in a particularly good way. Carries through on the taste. I really didn’t enjoy it.

F – Diplomat – Aldi – 7/10

  • Smells more like mint. Nothing to write home about, but probably one of the nicer samples overall. A standard mint taste.

Conclusions

So, I still don’t like tea, as you might be able to tell from the rather lacklustre tasting notes. Hey, I thought it was worth a shot.

All the tea samples looked very, very similar, but there was a surprising amount of variation in the smell and taste of each sample. I thought Twinings, Tesco, and Aldi were all decent enough samples – and you can see that there’s a real variation in price between those products.

However, what you’re really paying for here is style, design, and packaging, I think. I was handed the samples ready made, so I didn’t see the aesthetics of the thing. But the more expensive teabags came in fancy boxes and had more packaging, and had those teabag strings and things that stop you losing them in the mug. I think the more expensive brands are as much about the pleasure and ease of the tea ritual as anything else. So if that’s important to you then it might be worth taking into consideration. But… it’s not important to me. So I guess I’d just get the Aldi ones and be done with it. Or have a nice clean glass of water instead.

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Vegan Feta Cheese

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As we have established many times, I am in no way a vegan. But when I was teaching cookery, we once ran a Mexican class that consisted mainly of vegetarians with a few vegans in the mix, and my boss experimented with this recipe for vegan feta cheese. I’ve always been a bit wary of substituting a ‘free-from’ version of something for the real deal, because setting up the comparison often results in disappointment. But I literally could not stop eating this stuff when it was presented to me. Then I forgot about it, because I have no real need for vegan cheese substitutes on a day-to-day basis.

But, over a year later, I was throwing a vegan dinner party, and remembered the existence of this almond feta. I decided to give it a go. It was just as tasty as I remembered. Everyone else seemed to love it too, and I’ve made it a couple of times since.

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I’m not going to pretend this is a like-for-like substitute for feta, because obviously it tastes different, being made from almonds rather than dairy. But it does have the same salty, savoury, addictive joy about it. It’s wonderfully crumbly and versatile. The almonds, when broken down like this, are surprisingly creamy. Here, I’ve shown it crumbled on top of a salad (because just photographed in its little dish it would look a little uninspiring, just as photographing an untouched lump of real feta would). But you can use it just as you would the regular cheese: it’s great with all sorts of salads, or roasted vegetables, or sprinkled over eggs, or baked into a frittata. You can make up a dish of it and keep it in your fridge happily for a couple of weeks, pulling it out whenever you need it.

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Source

This recipe is adapted from the version we used when I was teaching, but I’m afraid I have no idea where that was from originally. Do shout if you know!

Notes

This does take a bit of time, but it’s largely completely passive time, where you can happily leave the nuts to do their thing and go and get on with your life.

Ingredients

200g blanched almonds
90 ml lemon juice
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus a little extra for the baking dish
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1½ teaspoons salt
125 ml water

Method

  1. First, soak the almonds. Place them in a bowl and pour over boiling water. Leave to soak for an hour.
  2. Drain the almonds, throwing away the water. Pop them into a food processor of other blender with the lemon juice, oil, garlic, salt, and 125ml water. Blitz thoroughly until you have a relatively smooth paste.
  3. Line a sieve with muslin, a clean tea towel, or a coffee filter. Put the almond paste into the lined sieve and leave to drain for at least three hours (or leave it overnight if you like).
  4. Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 3. Lightly oil a small baking dish or tin. Pop the almond mixture in, smooth the surface, and lightly smear a little more olive oil over the top. Bake for around 25 minutes, or until starting to turn golden. You can use the almond feta warm or cold from the fridge, as you wish.
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The Taste Test: Tomato Ketchup

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I thought ketchup would be a good subject for The Taste Test because it’s one of those products where there is a clear brand leader. Most people are probably accustomed to just habitually buying Heinz and paying more money for it, me included. But I suspected that this would be one of these tests where, actually, the cheaper own brands had a lot to offer. Read on to see if I was right…

I can actually take or leave ketchup.  I know some people are completely evangelical about it and eat it on everything, but I have no strong feelings. It’s alright on chips. I can live without it. Do any of your guys have an obsessive love for a particular condiment? Please don’t shun me, ketchup-lovers.

As before, I feel I need a rambling disclaimer: obviously, I am doing this in my kitchen and not in a lab and I am not a scientist. These are the opinions of one person – that said, one person who has been trained to taste for quality. Also, the products used in this series are just examples – obviously each supermarket has, say, eight or nine different types of ketchup or whatever the product may be, and I’m not going to try every single one because what am I, made of money?

Finally, I should highlight that I tasted all the products blind, and at the time of tasting and making my notes I didn’t know which product came from which shop. I sat in one room while my glamorous assistant (er, my husband), prepared the samples in another. Any notes added regarding packaging and so on were only done after blind tasting, when I learned which who had made product A, B, C, D, or E.

The Blind Taste Test: Tomato Ketchup

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Ketchup
per 100g
£
kcal
fat
carb
fibre
protein
salt
Sainsbury’s
0.13
95
0.5
19.9
2.3
1.9
0.97
Heinz
0.33
102
0.1
23.2
1.2
1.8
Essential Waitrose
0.13
103
0.2
23.4
1.4
1.2
1.45
Aldi Bramwell
0.08
108
1.0
23
1.2
1.3
1.7
Wilkin & Sons
0.69
182
0
41
1.5
1.2
Tesco
0.16
110
0.4
23.6
0.9
1.3
1.3

A – Waitrose – 5/10

  • Runny, slides on the spoon, separating a little bit. Smells tomatoey and slightly acidic – how I’d expect classic ketchup to smell. Quite an acidic taste. Tomato flavour is there but tastes a bit tinned.

B – Aldi Bramwell – 5/10

  • Very smooth. A less sharp and distinct smell than A, but a sharpness on taste and not much more than that. A bit too acidic, but not bad. Nondescript.

C – Wilkin and Sons – 8/10

  • Holds its shape well. Smells different to previous samples – not as sharp, more like tomato. Tastes rich and sweet, with a good balance of acidity and a nice texture. More of a tomato sauce taste than classic ketchup.

D – Tesco – 4/10

  • Holds shape well. Smooth and firm. Tastes very sharp – the sharpest sample. Too acidic and vinegary for me.

E – Sainsbury’s – 6/10

  • Smooth and mild. Doesn’t taste particularly sharp, but not dull either. A bit sweeter than some of the other samples – well balanced. Pleasant enough.

F – Heinz – 7/10

  • Tastes the nicest in terms of standard ketchup. Not too sharp or too sweet. Nothing to write home about, but a good example of a classic ketchup that’s well balanced and nice to eat.

Conclusions

Huge amounts of ketchup smell surprisingly nice. I was not expecting it to, but the savoury tomato scent made me hungry.

So, funnily enough, I actually did think that the Heinz ketchup was the nicest of the standard samples. The Wilkin and Sons was my actual favourite, but that was a very different style of product, and would probably be good for different things. If you’re just dunking chips, though, the Sainsbury’s own brand would do the job very well too. It’s worth noting that, gram for gram, Heinz is well over twice as expensive as the Sainsbury’s offering…

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Oreo Cookie Brownies

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First off, I have to tell you that these brownies are not my invention. They are my version of a very American thing called Slutty Brownies. I just… hate that name. I know that it’s different if you’re talking about baked goods rather than humans, but even so, ‘slutty’ is a horrible, derogatory word used almost exclusively to insult women, so, I’m out. Anyway, their original name doesn’t tell you what they are. Yeah, Oreo Cookie Brownies might not be as catchy a title, but it doesn’t use any offensive words and it tells you what you’re eating.

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There are lots of American recipes for these floating round on the web, and they are pretty much all based on the premise of boxed cake mixes. Have any of you ever tried a box mix? I haven’t – not really from cake snobbery, I’m actually kind of curious – but because it has never occurred to me to buy one. Anyway, I think they’re much more of a Thing in the US than they are here in the UK. Hence, most other recipes for these delightful brownies involve making a boxed cookie mix, topping it with Oreos, and then making a boxed brownie mix and pouring it on top.

I admit, my way takes a little bit more work. But not much more! Cookie dough and brownie batter are both really quick to put together. And it’s much cheaper to make them from scratch with ingredients you probably already have lying around than it would be to buy two boxed mixes.

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Having said all that, writing this has made me curious about boxed mixes, and now I am wondering if I should try one. You know, just to see if I am missing anything. Maybe that would be a fun idea for a Taste Test post? Buy all the boxed brownie mixes I can find, then make them all, then… well, nothing good would come of that really, would it?

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Notes

You could, of course, ignore everything I have just said and do this with two boxed mixes if you like.

Also, I haven’t tried it yet, but I feel like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups would also be excellent in here in place of the Oreos, should you be that way inclined.

Do try to start with room temperature butter if you can. It really speeds everything up. Also, you should pretty much always be baking with room temperature eggs.

Ingredients

cookie layer
165g butter, softened
130g light brown soft sugar
65g caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large egg yolks
215g plain flour
1 tsp fine sea salt

Double sleeve of Oreos – my tin takes 16

brownie layer
200g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids
140g butter
225g caster sugar
2 eggs, plus 1 extra yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g plain flour

Method

  1. Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4. Grease and line a 20cm square tin. You’ll make your cookie layer first, but start by putting your 200g dark chocolate and 140g butter for the brownies in a bowl over a pan of simmering water to melt gently in the background.
  2. Now, get on with your cookie layer. Beat your butter, light brown soft sugar, and caster sugar together until evenly combined and light – I do this in a stand mixer but electric beaters or a wooden spoon will do the job. Beat in your vanilla and egg yolks until evenly combined. Finally, mix in your flour and salt. Press your cookie dough mix in an even layer into the base of your tin.
  3. Place Oreos on top of the cookie dough. My tin takes 16 but just place as many as comfortably fit in a grid in a single layer on top of the dough.
  4. On to the brownies. Your chocolate and butter should be nicely melted together by now, so take them off the heat. With an electric beater or by hand, beat in your sugar. When combined, beat in your eggs and extra yolk with the vanilla – keep beating for a couple of minutes until it’s smooth, glossy, and sightly lightened and thickened. Finally, fold in your flour. Pour your brownie batter on top of your cookie dough and Oreos and smooth the top.
  5. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the brownie layer is firm around the edges (it will probably start to crack a little at the sides, which is fine). It’s okay for it to seem soft in the middle, but you don’t want completely raw batter. Eat hot and gooey from the pan, or chill to set for a couple of hours and then cut into neat squares.
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The Taste Test: Raspberry Jam

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Well, I chose raspberry jam, because that’s my favourite jam. ‘That’s everyone’s favourite jam’, said James, but I don’t think that’s true? I feel like quite a lot of people would say strawberry? Anyway, me being me, my actual favourite jam is probably some obscure homemade artisan Morello cherry and Cognac monstrosity that I haven’t even tried yet, but certainly my favourite day-to-day jam is raspberry. It’s lovely on croissants. It’s excellent with peanut butter. Pop it in-between some cakes and you’ve got yourself a party.

Also, obviously I went for jam with seeds because I don’t get seedless jam. Just why?

As before, I feel I need a rambling disclaimer: obviously, I am doing this in my kitchen and not in a lab and I am not a scientist. These are the opinions of one person – that said, one person who has been trained to taste for quality. Also, the products used in this series are just examples – obviously each supermarket has, say, eight or nine different types of jam or whatever the product may be, and I’m not going to try every single one because what am I, made of money?

Finally, I should highlight that I tasted all the products blind, and at the time of tasting and making my notes I didn’t know which product came from which shop. I sat in one room while my glamorous assistant (er, my husband), prepared the samples in another. Any notes added regarding packaging and so on were only done after blind tasting, when I learned which who had made product A, B, C, D, or E.

The Blind Taste Test: Raspberry Jam

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Raspberry Jam
per 100g
£
kcal
fat
carb
fibre
protein
salt
Sainsbury’s Organic
0.44
248
0.5
59
2.1
0.8
0.05
St Dalfour
0.77
237
0.8
56
2
0.5
0.02
Bonne Maman
0.50
239
0.2
57
3.4
0.7
Waitrose
0.52
247
0.6
58.8
2.2
0.6
0.13
Grandessa Aldi
0.13
244
0.5
61
0.5
0.5
0.05
Tesco
0.17
262
0.5
63
1.9
0.4
0.2

A – St Dalfour – 6/10

  • Firm, holds its shape well on the spoon. Very, very seedy. I like seeds but this might be a bit much for me – it’s like a seed paste. Good balance of sharpness and sweetness, and decent raspberry flavour.

B – Waitrose – 7/10

  • Smoother and less seedy than A. Sharper too, with more of a raspberry flavour than A. Tastes naturally fruity – very enjoyable.

C – Grandessa Aldi – 6/10

  • Much less structure, running off the spoon, very loose. Very sweet – a bit too sweet for my palate. Not a bad flavour though. Would probably be nicer on toast with the neutral bread to balance the sweetness.

D – Bonne Maman – 8/10

  • Dark, rich, and thick, holds shape well. Substantial. Not too sweet, a great balance. Full on raspberry flavour.

E – Tesco – 3/10

  • Holding shape well, not running everywhere. Much lighter in colour than some of the other samples. Tastes a bit artificial and cloying with sweetness – like raw jelly cubes – with an odd texture and aftertaste.

F – Sainsbury’s – 5/10

  • Fine, but nothing special, and again a bit too sweet. Another one with an odd texture.

Conclusions

Well, here we have a Taste Test where the fancy, pricier brands won out. I guess it makes sense here, in a way: more expensive product = higher fruit content and less bulking out with cheap sugar. Most of these would be fine for casual toast-consumption, but if you want to go for something a bit special, for an event cake for example, then I wouldn’t kick that Bonne Maman stuff out of bed, and the Waitrose one was nice too. Neither were actually the most expensive either, which is an unexpected bonus.

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Spinach and Sweet Potato Rolls

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I was going to call these ‘vegetarian sausage rolls’ but, well, it seemed like a bit of a misnomer. They don’t really have anything to do with sausages, particularly those fake vegetarian sausages. I always feel like if you call a substitute for something the same name as the real thing you’re setting yourself up for failure. Like those sweet potato ‘brownies’. Or seitan ‘chicken’. If you set up the comparison, then the substitute will always suffer. Even if the substitute is something that’s actually perfectly delicious in its own right. This is my long and rambling way of explaining why these are called spinach and sweet potato rolls.

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And I’m well aware that spinach and sweet potato rolls isn’t a very inspiring name either. But at least it tells you what you’re getting. And I’m hoping my enthusiasm for these will do the rest because, wow, they are so good. I actually prefer these to real sausage rolls. Something about the gently spiced spinach, the crispy pastry, and the pockets of salty cheese is absolutely irresistible. To me, anyway. I had about four of these straight out of the oven.

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These would obviously be absolutely excellent at a buffet or a picnic, even though it still feels far too January to be thinking about such things. But they are also great for packed lunches – they keep well and can be eaten hot or cold. They also make a very satisfying lunch or dinner, alongside some salad or something (or, er, just eaten by the handful).

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Source:

Adapted from this recipe.

Ingredients

Generous knob of butter
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
400g sweet potato
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp tumeric
250g baby spinach leaves
400g can chickpeas
salt and pepper
200g feta cheese
1 bunch fresh coriander
1 bunch fresh parsley
2 sheets of pre-rolled puff pastry
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp nigella/black onion seeds

Method

  1. Pop your largest frying pan on a medium heat and start to melt your butter. Dice your onion, and pop it into the foaming butter, then turn down the heat and let it cook gently for five minutes. Crush your garlic and add it to the pan. Peel and grate the sweet potato and add this too. Give everything a stir, and let it cook down for around 10 minutes, or until the potato is soft.
  2. When the sweet potato has softened, stir your cumin, turmeric, and spinach into the pan. Turn up the heat and cook for a couple of minutes, driving off some of the water from the spinach.
  3. Drain your chickpeas. Either process with 2 tbsp water to make a rough puree, or mash with a fork, as you prefer. Stir the chickpeas through the mixture. Taste, and season. Set the vegetable base aside to cool completely. You can put it in the fridge to speed this along if you like.
  4. Crumble the feta and finely chop your parsley and coriander. Stir these through the cold vegetable mixture.
  5. Unroll your two sheets of puff pastry, Halve your vegetable mixture. Put half of the mixture onto one of the pastry sheets. Shape it into a log, positioning the mixture around 1/3 of the way up the sheet, then roll the pastry round the filling. Seal it with beaten egg where the pastry edges overlap. Repeat with the second sheet of pastry and the rest of the mix, so that you have two logs of pastry stuffed with filling. Freeze the pastry logs for 30 minutes to firm them.
  6. Heat your oven to 200C/180C fan/ gas 4. Remove your pastry from the freezer. Brush the logs with beaten egg, sprinkle them with the seeds, and slice them into smaller rolls – the size is up to you. I like to slash each roll across the top but it isn’t absolutely necessary.
  7. Bake for around 25 minutes, or until your spinach and sweet potato rolls are golden, crispy, and smelling amazing.
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Spiced Parsnip and Apple Soup

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Simple soups are great for the January slump, when you don’t want to be fussing about making anything too complicated, but you need a warming and comforting bowl of food. This spiced parsnip and apple soup will do the job: make a batch and keep it in your fridge, ready to heat up for an easy meal. The addition of lentils make it hearty and filling, and the spices make it a bit more interesting than its plainer cousins.

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Bramley apples are the definitive English cooking apple: sour and juicy, they work very well here, lending a little sweetness when cooked and complementing the soup’s spices. Parsnips are one of my favourite root vegetables. Cheap, readily available, easy to prepare, with a satisfying nutty flavour, they are wonderful in soups. Both apples and parsnips are in season in January, and should be easy to find and at their best for this parsnip and apple soup.

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Ingredients

Generous knob of butter
1 white onion, thinly sliced
600g parsnips, peeled and cut into roughly 2cm chunks
2 tbsp curry powder (or less, if you don’t like your food a bit spicy)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
2 garlic cloves, crushed
150g dry red lentils
300g Bramley apples, peeled and cut into chunks
1 litre vegetable stock
100ml cream
flaked sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
fresh coriander and cream, to finish

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan on a medium heat until foaming. Add the onion and the parsnips. Cook for 5 minutes.
  2. Add spices, garlic, lentils, and apples. Stir well, and cook for 2 minutes. Pour the stock into the pan. Bring to a simmer and cook for 20-30 minutes, or until the parsnips are totally soft.
  3. Blitz the soup until smooth, either with a stick blender or in a food processor. Stir in the cream. Taste and season. Serve with a drizzle more cream and some chopped fresh coriander, if you like.
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Oatmeal Rum Raisin Cookies

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I initially made these cookies by accident. I was making a huge batch of various baked goods for an event. The kitchen was completely full of finished and half-made delicious things, with trays of macarons and cooling cakes on every surface (my tiny kitchen doesn’t really have many surfaces). I was making a pan of brownies that had a cookie dough base and Oreos in the middle, and I messed up the quantities and ended up with a load of spare cookie dough. Maths is not my strong point.

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So I had this plain cookie dough without a purpose, and no time to think properly about what to do with it. I had raisins. I had oats. I had rum. The cookies were born.

The first time I made these, I threw the ingredients in randomly, without measuring, and didn’t pay much attention because I was making loads of other things too. And they were amazing. So very good. I had to give them away to stop myself from eating them all immediately.

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So I was then faced with the task of recreating the cookies of joy. I mean, you know, there have been worse tasks. I played around for a bit, and this is what I came up with. Unfortunately I can never make them again, unless I’m prepared to eat an entire batch of oatmeal rum raisin cookies myself very quickly.

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Notes

This recipe makes around 20 generously sized cookies.

Ingredients

150g raisins
75ml rum
250g butter, softened
200g light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large egg yolks
325g plain flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
a little grated whole nutmeg
120g oats

Method

  1. Pop your raisins and rum together in a bowl to soak. Line a baking tray which will fit in your freezer with parchment paper. In your largest bowl or in a stand-mixer, beat the butter and both types of sugar together until just combined and even, then beat in the vanilla and egg yolks – all at once is fine. Add your flour, salt, bicarbonate, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Mix to form firm dough. Finally, fold in your oats, raisins, and any un-absorbed rum.
  2. Using a small ice cream scoop, scoop the dough into golf ball sized rounds and pop them on your lined tray. Freeze for an hour, or up to a month.
  3. Heat your oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4, and take the cookies out of the freezer. Spread the frozen dough between three or four lined baking trays – you need to give them a lot of space to expand.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the outsides of the cookies are baked and crispy, but the insides still feel soft and underbaked. Let them rest on the counter to firm up for at least 10 minutes. Eat with reckless abandon.
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The Taste Test: Honey

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Honey is one of those things that I always have in the cupboard, but haven’t ever really thought about that much. I sometimes have it on toast, drizzled over baked goats’ cheese, or use it in baking. It’s great in tea with lemon and fresh ginger. I use it in salad dressings. But I’ve never been too discerning about what brand I buy.

This was an interesting test, and tricky in a way, because there are so many different types of honey. So many. Different flowers, different fruits, different sets and consistencies. I have avoided set honey and manuka honey for the sake of consistency, but I am aware that the samples don’t exactly correlate. Some of them are based on specific flowers and so on. But it’s really tricky to find six different samples of exactly the same breed of honey, so just go with me on this.

As before, I feel I need a rambling disclaimer: obviously, I am doing this in my kitchen and not in a lab and I am not a scientist. These are the opinions of one person – that said, one person who has been trained to taste for quality. Also, the products used in this series are just examples – obviously each supermarket has, say, eight or nine different types of honey or whatever the product may be, and I’m not going to try every single one because what am I, made of money?

Finally, I should highlight that I tasted all the products blind, and at the time of tasting and making my notes I didn’t know which product came from which shop. I sat in one room while my glamorous assistant (er, my husband), prepared the samples in another. Any notes added regarding packaging and so on were only done after blind tasting, when I learned which who had made product A, B, C, D, or E.

The Blind Taste Test: Honey

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Honey
per 100g
£
kcal
fat
carb
fibre
protein
salt
Sainsbury’s
0.29
329
0.5
81.5
0.5
0.5
0.03
Waitrose
1.17
307
0
76.4
0
0.4
0.03
Rowse
0.84
329
0.5
81.5
0.5
0.5
0.03
Aldi – Everyday Essentials
0.29
328
0.5
82
0.5
0.5
0.01
Wilkin & Sons
1.51
355
0
86
0
0
0
Hilltop Honey
1.76
333
0.5
83
0.5
0.5
0.02
Tesco Finest
0.88
326
0.1
81.0
0.1
0.5
0.01

A – Rowse – 6/10

  • A deep amber colour. Fairly thin, very runny. Doesn’t smell like anything other than generic honey. Tastes quite floral – nice depth of flavour, not just pure sugar on the palate.

B – Aldi – 5/10

  • Lighter, a pale gold. Thicker and more viscous than A. Tastes sweet – generically sugary rather than carrying a specific flavour.

C – Wilkin & Sons – 7/10

  • A pale yellow gold. Much thicker than A or B, really coats a spoon. A interesting, complex scent. Sweet, but with an interesting flavour – elements of citrus. Enjoyable to eat.

D – Hilltop Honey – 7/10

  • The palest honey by far, almost clear. Medium thickness. Great taste. A bitter backnote against the sweetness, which gives it a complex and rounded flavour.

E – Tesco Finest – 3/10

  • One of the darkest, a rich orange. Thick, clinging to the spoon. A very distinctive taste, which I personally did not like. What I thought was an odd and unpleasant flavour – a sourness.

F – Sainsbury’s – 7/10

  • Mid golden colour. Quite thin. Smells lovely. Quite a lot of flavour – a floral taste.

G – Waitrose – 3/10

  • One of the darkest and thickest samples – really clings to a spoon. An odd smell and taste, which I found really quite unpleasant.

Conclusions

E (Tesco) and G (Waitrose) were notably different to all of the other samples. The rest were all subtly different from each other, but enjoyable in their own ways. All of those would be fine for eating, using in baking, or anything you might choose to use honey for. This might be one of those matters of personal taste – I’m not sure if any of these were objectively bad – but I certainly wouldn’t buy samples E or G again. They had an incredibly strong taste and smell, and I can’t imagine what I would use them for.

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Pear and Berry Crumble with Oats and Spelt

3 Comments

After last week’s crumble recipe, I thought it was high time for another crumble. It’s been a whole week, guys. I could barely cope. Anyway, this is a pear and berry crumble, not an apple crumble. Totally different thing.

Okay, you’re right, it’s not a totally different thing. I just wanted to show you how you can use the same method and proportions but tweak the ingredients to make a different dish. Also, I wanted to eat two crumbles.

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I’m not trying to tell you this is low-calorie or health food, but it is a different beast to last week’s crumble. I’ve used wholemeal spelt flour instead of plain, skipped the booze, added oats, and packed it with berries. Instead of eating this with ice cream, I like it with Greek yoghurt. Probably because of the oats, I tell myself it has a more breakfast-y vibe.

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Anyway, when it’s grey and January-ish outside and we’ve all had to get back to work, there’s absolutely nothing better than a warm bowlful of pear and berry crumble joy. Trust me. Also trust James, who liked this so much that he got viciously possessive about it, like when you corner a cat with a mouse and it looks at you distrustfully because it thinks you will take it away.

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Notes

This will make 6-8 portions. I am not saying it will feed 6-8 people, because we can happily polish this off between the two of us. Not in one sitting. I think pear and berry crumble makes a great breakfast. This one is practically porridge.

The whole point of these recipes is to show you that you can adapt crumble as you see fit – do try your own twist on this, using whatever fruits, nuts, flours, or sugars you fancy.

Ingredients

for the crumble topping

240g wholemeal spelt flour (or use half wholemeal and half spelt, if you prefer)
120g light brown soft sugar
130g cold butter, cut into pieces
100g oats

for the base

6 pears
70g unsalted butter
70g demerara sugar
250g mixed frozen berries
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Plain Greek yoghurt, to serve

Method

  1. Heat your oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Tip the flour and sugar into a large bowl. Add the butter, then rub into the flour with your fingers until you reach breadcrumb texture. Stir in the oats. Spread the crumble evenly over a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly coloured.
  2. Meanwhile, for the base, peel, core and cut the pears into chunks. Put the butter and sugar in a large saucepan and melt together over a medium heat. Cook for a couple of minutes until everything is dissolved, and the mixture is a caramel colour. Stir in the pears, and cook for 5 minutes. Add the berries (still frozen is fine) and cinnamon, and cook for 5 minutes more. Tip the mixture into your chosen crumble dish.
  3. Top the fruit with your crumble. Cook the whole thing in the oven for around 15 minutes, or until hot through, golden, and bubbling. Serve with plain Greek yoghurt.