Awaken my TASTEbuds (review)

Having read a review of the Coriander & Rose Petal salt from www.tastespice.co.uk on Madhouse Family Reviews Blog, I was intrigued and eager to give it a try.
Before I continue, I would like to mention that if you enjoy reading reviews, then I cannot recommend Madhouse Family Reviews highly enough.

I love flavoured salts, and haven't seen any with the rose petals before.
Off I went browsing on the Taste Gourmet Spice Company website. And I couldn't stop at buying just the salt I was looking for. Too many temptations. So I decided to limit myself to buying three new products. My online basket was filled with the coriander and rose petal salt, saffron and orange oil and vanilla sugar.

Vanilla sugar is not a rare product, you can get it from the most major supermarkets, but it was on offer, so I couldn't resist. It is also quite easy to make your own if you ever fancy doing a batch, it keeps well. I remember young Jamie Oliver enthusing about the pleasures of whizzing your own batch of vanilla sugar. How does Taste vanilla sugar compare to let's say Waitrose vanilla sugar? It is less grainy and is finer in texture, has a very strong perfumey vanilla scent.
I used it for making sweet blini and bigger size pancakes.

Here the vanilla sugar was added to the batter and also sprinkled on the chopped banana (which in the photo below is hidden under the cream, just the way my husband likes it).

Blini were sweet enough to enjoy without any added toppings like honey or maple syrup.
Vanilla sugar is lovely in fruit salads. Or just grab a juicy strawberry and dip it in the aromatic vanilla sugar, what a feast!

I absolutely loved the Coriander & Rose petal sea salt. By now I tried it in a variety of dishes, and it works beautifully with many ingredients. Simple roast potatoes get transformed by this salt into something from the Arabian Nights.
My first dish was the pan-fried duck fillet, which was generously sprinkled with the salt. The rose petals made the duck more aromatic, but it wasn't overpowering. If anything, I would have liked a slightly higher ratio of the rose petals to the coriander. The duck was very tasty. I served it with the Tenderstem broccoli, which was steamed and mixed with the Saffron and orange oil.

That's another dish where I used the Saffron and orange oil (on a different occasion): roast butternut squash and sweet potatoes. And this oil is just meant for adding to the roast baby carrots.

I often pick rose petals from the garden and dry them to add to the black tea, but this year I am going to do my own version of the Coriander and rose petal sea salt.