Party & Feeling Festive Degustabox

 There is less than a month to go until Christmas, and the time will fly fast. The shops are already packed full with customers, and I imagine it will be carnage closer to the festive days. The town does look festive, now that the Christmas lights have been switched on, and many shops have colourful seasonal window displays. I might not be attending any parties, but I can certainly enjoy the festive mood, especially if I have some lovely treats to look forward to.

Party & Feeling Festive is the theme of the latest Degustabox.

Degustabox is a monthly food and drink subscription box. It's an excellent way of discovering new products which have only just appeared in the shops, or those which have been around for a while, but you haven't had a chance to try them yet.

Thanks to Degustabox, I have found new favourites to add to our shopping list, including some products which I otherwise wouldn't have tried.

Each time a monthly box arrives, its contents are a total surprise. You get a good selection of foods and drinks.

If you haven't tried Degustabox subscription box yet, and would like to have a go, I have a £3off discount from your first box (and you can unsubscribe any time), just use code DKRLN when placing an order.

Let's have a look at what we got in the Party & Feeling Festive box.

McVitie's Chocolate Digestives The Fully Coated One/Chocolate Hobnobs The Fully Coated One (£1.79) is the Product of the Month. Chocoholics rejoice, the classic McVitie's chocolate digestives and chocolate hobnobs will make you double happy, being completely coated in chocolate.  You get the iconic golden-baked biscuits, but with extra chocolate. That's a truly special experience.

You should receive 1 of 2 items in your box (as a reviewer I got both items). 

Available in all major supermarket stores.

Nutritional information: each McVitie's The Fully Coated One Hobnob biscuit contains 127kcal, 6.4g of fat and 9g of sugar, as opposed to 79kcal, 3.7g of fat, and 6.1g of sugar per one chocolate Hobnob (so quite an increase).

McVities The Fully Coated One Digestives: 130kcal, 6,9g of fat and 9,5g of sugar per biscuit.

Mr Filberts Sea Salt & Hern Mixed Nuts (£1.50) is an ultimate party snack. These mixed nuts - peanuts, almonds and cashews - are roasted to perfection, then tumbled in a sweet basil, oregano and sea salt mix to produce the delightful savoury snack.

Nutritional information: 589kcal and 1.4g of salt per 100g.

Available at https://mrfilberts.com, on Amazon, Ocado, in Independent Farm shops and delis.

We had this tasty snack as part of the cheeseboard, and let me tell you, these mixed nuts were gone in 60 seconds.

Nairn's Cheese Oatcakes (£1.50) are versatile delicious oatcakes, made with mature Cheddar cheese, wholegrain oats and very little else. Nairn's oatcakes are a real winner. As a big cheese fan, I often buy Nairn's oatcakes, they are great with any cheese really, hard, soft, blue. Very moreish.

Available in all major supermarkets.

For me a perfect cheeseboard must include oatcakes.

The English Provender Co. Caramelised Red Onion Chutney (£2) is made of sweet red onions, and is a fabulous addition to any cheeseboard or charcuterie. Also great on hot cheese toasties. It will elevate any sandwich, whether for meat eaters or vegetarians.

It's not a new product, and it's been around for a while, in fact I checked my blog, and found a post about this chutney, which I wrote in 2012. As mentioned then, I still make mini open tarts with the caramelised red onion chutney and brie.

Available at Waitrose and on Ocado.

Peppadew Sweet Piquante Peppers Hot Whole 400g (£3) is a great addition to a party table or buffet. Add them to the antispasti platters, top up pizza or salad, or add to a cheese sandwich. These bit sized peppers retain their firm and crunchy texture. They are a bit on the hot side, and will jazz up many dishes. Suitable for vegan and vegetarian dishes.

Nutritional values: 91kcal and 18.9g of sugar per 100g.

Available at Tesco, Waitrose, on Ocado and Amazon.

Knorr Chilli & Smoked Paprika/Mushroom & Italian Herbs seasoning (£1.80) will help you create a delicious, no added salt meals. Perfect for all those soups and stews in the cold weather. Knorr Seasoning Blends join the Knorr Veggie Cook's Essentials range with all the falvour.

Knorr Chilli & Smoked Paprika is a mix of chilli, paprika, green pepper, smoked paprika powder and sunflower seed oil. No added salt, 100% natural ingredients, no artificial colours or preservatives, no added MSG. Ideal for chillis, salsa, stir fried veg.

You should receive one of two items in your box.

Available at Tesco.

Hellmann's Sour Cream & Chive Squeeze 250 ml (£1.20) is the new addition to the range, great for a variety of dishes, from nachos to fajitas, from jacket potatoes to topping burgers, from chips to salads.

If you offer a selection of crisps and tortilla chips as part of the buffet, don't forget the Sour Cream & Chive sauce as one of the dips.

This is a gluten-free, vegetarian sauce, which comes in a fully recyclable bottle.

Nutritional values: 317kcal and 32g of fat in 100g.

Available at Waitroose, Iceland, and on Ocado.

Inés Rosales Orange Sweet Olive Oil Tortas (£2.50) is considered to be Spain's favourite pastry snack since 1910. Each torta is a unique, flakey tempting treat. 

All tortas are hand-made using all natural ingredients from the Mediterranean Diet. They are dairy-free, vegan, and contain no artificial colours or flavours. 

Nutritional values: 149kcal and 4.4g of sugar per torta.

Available in Waitrose, and selected gourmet stores.

Menier Swiss Milk Chocolate with Salted Caramel (£1.99) will please the chocolate fans. Menier have been producing the finest cooking chocolate since 1816. This Salted Caramel milk chocolate is a work of beauty. 

This gourmet chocolate is sweet and creamy smooth, with a definite salty note. It is rather sophisticated and glamorous.

Nutritional values: 85kcal and 9.4g of sugar per portion/row. The cocoa in this chocolate is Rainforest certified. It is also Vegetarian Society approved.

Available at WH Smith's and on Amazon.

Passoa Passion Fruit Liqueur (£13 for the full size bottle, and £1.6 for the sample size bottle).

Passoa is the passion fruit liqueur, an essential ingredient for an exotic cocktail.

I am yet to try this tempting treat. We'll have it in cocktails closer to Christmas time.

Try at home: 40ml Passoa, 40ml vanilla vodka, 15ml lime juice. Shake and fine strain into a martini glass. Garnish with passion fruit and prosecco shot optional.

The full size bottle is available at Tecso, Waitrose, ASDA, Sainsbury's and Morrisons. The sample size bottles are not currently available.

Radnor Infusions Raspberry and Black Cherry (£1.50) is an unsweetened flavoured Welsh sparkling spring water. It has zero sugar, sweeteners and almost zero calories (0.3kcal per 100ml). 

Infusions is crafted in the ancient county of Radnorshire using their own spring water with a gentle sparkle, delicately infused with all natural flavours and extracts.

Made with cherry and British raspberry extracts, preservative free, it's a beautiful refershing drink.

Available at Sainsbury's, on Ocado, Amazon, and RadnorHill.co.uk/shop.

All in all, another corker from Degustabox! 

Apple raisin chutney

Whatever meal you are cooking at Easter, a nice jar of chutney will never go amiss with any of the roast leftovers or a cheese platter.
Add a bit of booze for an extra festive touch. I used a small bottle of grappa in this recipe. I don't remember how it happened to be in our house. Most likely a small gift. If you don't have grappa, swap it for brandy, or skip altogether.
I like a touch of alcohol in marmalades (whisky flavoured Seville orange marmalade anyone?!) and chutneys; after cooking the alcohol evaporates, giving a stronger more intense flavour to the finished product.

Apple raisin chutney
Ingredients:
about 1kg of apples, preferably a tart variety
2 medium red onions, finely chopped
200g raisins
1tsp sea salt
juice of 1/2 lemon
1tbsp mustard seeds
1tsp ground ginger
1tsp ground cloves
500g brown sugar
250ml malt vinegar
40ml grappa (optional)

Peel and core the apples and cut into chunks. Put the apples, finely chopped red onions, raisins, lemon juice, salt, mustard seeds, ground ginger and cloves. brown sugar and malt vinegar in a medium sized pan. Bring to the boil, simmer on low for an hour. Add the grappa in the last 15 minutes of cooking.
Cook simmering until thick. Pour into sterilised jam/chutney jars and cover with lids.
Ideally store for about a month for flavours to develop, but if you can't wait, even a week is fine. I'm actually quite happy to eat it in cheese sandwiches the next day after cooking.
It will keep in the fridge for 3+ months, maybe longer, but I cannot vouch for that, as I cook small batches, and they usually get eaten fast enough.

In this recipe I used a bottle of Sarson's malt vinegar, which you might find in the latest Degustabox delivery.

Filipino-style banana chutney

A couple of days ago as Eddie and I were leaving his school, we noticed a small table laden with free fruit on offer, the leftovers from what the kids didn't choose to eat at their snack time. I picked a small bag of bananas, thinking that I would bake a banana cake or bread. Then once we got home, I decided I'd rather do a banana chutney. Having googled, I came across an intriguing-sounding recipe for Filipino-style banana chutney on The Guardian's Readers' recipe swap.
It has been submitted by Marmaduke Scarlet, a blogger who has lots of delightful recipes on her blog.
I couldn't find this particular recipe on her blog, so I'm pointing you in the direction of The Guardian's page (see the link above).
First of all, I liked the idea that you can make a small batch. If you don't like it, not a big problem, you are not surrounded by dozens of jars of preserves which are not to your liking. You get enough for two small Kilner jars.
Its ingredients include 5 mashed bananas, an onion, chilli, garlic, fresh ginger, turmeric and allspice, sultanas and cider vinegar, rum (I used Malibu), soy sauce, tomato puree and sea salt.
The recipe is very easy follow and doesn't take too long.

I made the chutney yesterday, and tried it today with a ham sandwich. Let me tell you, it's terrific. I am definitely going to make more of this chutney.
It will make a lovely Christmas gift too. It goes well with the ham, and I imagine will be great with any cold meat. Or with a cheese board. It might not be a looker: as you can imagine, mashed banana doesn't look especially attractive, but let not this fact deter you. It has a wonderful taste.
I wonder if I can prettify it slightly by adding chopped stem ginger instead of the grated fresh one.
If you're looking for a more unusual chutney recipe, look no further. This recipe is a keeper.

Apple and cranberry chutney

A few nights ago we had a terrible weather. Perhaps I wouldn't call it a tornado, but it was very blustery and the ground was strewn with broken branches the next morning. All the apples from our apple trees were thrown down by the strong winds. These were the apples I couldn't reach, even with a step-ladder. They got quite bruised in the fall, so I won't be able to keep them for long, and some of them were already pecked by the birds. I picked a few kilograms from the ground, and need to do something with them as soon as possible, before they get spoilt.
The first thought was an apple jelly, but I made so much last year, and I think we still have some jars left. I fancied making something festive and seasonal, preferably a combination of apples and cranberries. Having googled for recipes (how did we live before Google?!), I came across a promising looking recipe for an Apple and cranberry chutney.

I have followed the recipe closely enough, slightly changing it (if you want to read the recipe, please follow the link above. It's a pretty easy and straight-forward recipe). I added a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and half a teaspoon of ground cloves to make it more festive.
Also I didn't use a combination of cookers and eaters. Our apple trees are different varieties, though they are all eaters, albeit on a tart side. Actually they are at their best right now, they sort of mellowed in taste.
So in my recipe I used 1 and a half kilograms of eating apples (not a sweet variety). The recipe on Good Food didn't specify the type of onions they used, but I cooked this chutney with two big red onions.
The chutney is lovely, it's a good mix of sharp, tart and sweet flavours.

It didn't turn out as red as in the Good Food's photo, mine were more pink than red. Maybe cooking the cranberries a bit longer would result in a different colour.
It was enough to fill in six jars of different sizes. The prettier ones (Kilner) I plan to use as Christmas gifts. I'm thinking of doing a few mini-hampers with a decent chunk of cheese, a box of good crackers and a jar of homemade chutney.

This is a delicious chutney, which is perfect with cheese. I think it will work well with cold meats too. The apples are jammy-gooey with whole cranberries which have a nice bite.
Are you making any Christmas foodie gifts?

Getting creative with Geeta's Premium Mango Chutney

Did you know that Geeta's, the iconic Indian brand, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary? This month bloggers have been invited to join the Chutney Challenge.

Geeta's is probably best known for their first ever product - the Premium Mango Chutney. The chutney itself is delicious and full of flavours and textures. I love the big fat chunks of juicy mango. It is also very colourful and aromatic, a versatile product that is so moreish, you cannot have enough.

As my regular readers know, I love cooking challenges, and when I heard of the Chutney Challenge, I just had to take part.

This is what I found out about the challenge:
"Still going strong today, we are celebrating by inviting some of our favourite bloggers to join in this fun competition.

Geeta's Premium Mango Chutney is such a versatile ingredient and we want to challenge you to share your most inventive and original recipe using the chutney, be that sweet, savoury, mild or spicy. The rules are simple, if you want to take part I will send you a jar of the chutney and then it is over to you to get creative in the kitchen! Each blogger is invited to upload up to three recipes using the chutney each.

The winning recipe will be selected by namesake and founder, Geeta Samtani along with two runners up. The winner will receive a luxury Geeta's hamper and the runners up will also receive a smaller selection of Geeta's products."

I am offering you 3 recipes for your delectation, all very easy and quick, perfect for a lunch or midweek dinner.

Recipe no.1

Camembert baked in shortcrust pastry with Geeta's mango chutney

Ingredients

1 camembert

1 roll of short-crust pastry (like Jus-Rol)

2 tbsp Geeta's Mango Chutney

a bit of milk

This must be one of the easiest and nicest ways of enjoying a baked cheese. I have used this recipe with different toppings and variations of ingredients for many years, and it is always a big hit with the family and guests. It makes a lovely starter too. 

Cut out two circles from the shortcrust pastry. Place a camembert on top of the big circle. Spread two tbsp of the mango chutney on the top of the cheese. Carefully lift the pastry up and using fingers flatten it and smooth the edges. Place a smaller circle on top and press the edges down, again smoothing all edges and closing the gaps. Make sure all the pastry is tightly packed around the cheese, you don't want any cheese to escape through the gaps during the baking.

That's what the cheese in pastry looks like before it is baked. Brush the pastry with a bit of milk.

Place it in the oven preheated to 180C on a foil-covered tray. To prevent the possible leaking disasters, you might want to scrunch the foil around the cheese like a barrier.

Bake for about 20 mins, until the pastry is golden. Take the baked cheese out of the oven and let it cool a bit.
You want it warm, but not piping hot. If you start cutting the cheese immediately, the molten lava of hot camembert will simply escape the pastry casing and you will have a lake of cheese around the pastry island (been there, done that, so talking from experience).
Geeta's mango chutney works beautifully with the creamy cheese and crumbly pastry.


Recipe no.2
Mango chutney cream cheese spread

The original recipe comes from my lovely American friend Trudy. I first tried this spread many years ago and loved it. I have adapted Trudy's recipe, as I am not very keen on pecans, plus she used the American brands for the chutney and cream, but in essence it is very close to her idea. Trudy is 85, and she learnt how to make this lovely spread when she was much younger. Its original name is Curry Chutney Mold.

Ingredients (for about 20 servings to go with crackers)
1 package of cream cheese (e.g. Philadelphia light)
2 tbsp thick cream (I used Weight Watchers West Country thick cream)
1/2 tbsp curry powder
150g Geeta's Mango Chutney
8 walnuts, finely chopped

Chop the walnuts (or pecans if you prefer). Mix all the ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl. And that's it. Very tasty with crackers or the Italian style flatbreads. I served this spread on Crosta & Mollica rosemary linguette. A truly delicious combination. Try it, I think you are going to love it too.

Recipe no.3
Spatchcocked poussin
Ingredients 
1 poussin (2 servings)
1 garlic clove
2 tbsp Geeta's mango chutney
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
a pinch of paprika (optional)
2 tsp olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180C. using a pair of kitchen scissors, cut the poussin to open it and flatten it. Season well with the salt, pepper, paprika and crushed garlic. Drizzle with the olive oil and place on a roasting tray. Add the mango chutney 20 minutes before the end of cooking (spread with a spoon all over the poussin).
Roast for 40 minutes until cooked through and golden.
Serve with the roast potatoes, olives and a lemon wedge (optional).
Mango chutney adds a fab zingy exotic boost of flavours.

I could have been playing more with the recipe ideas, but my jar is empty now, and I could only submit 3 recipes to the Chutney Challenge.
Looking forward to seeing everyone's entries and suggestions.


For more information on Geeta's range and the latest news please visit Geeta's Facebook page.

Life full of flavours: Caramelised Red Onion Chutney from The English Provender (review)

If you love chutneys, you might have seen the enticing jars of chutneys from The English Provender Co. on the shelves of the supermarkets and the delis.
I have a couple of jars of their chutneys in the fridge, in case we have visitors who invited themselves for a cuppa tea. These chutneys are superb with the cheese, but also are my secret weapon when I am making little open tarts. Just add a generous helping to the shortcrust or puff pastry, top up with a goat's cheese or brie, bake for 10-15 minutes, and you have a mouthwatering treat.

Lovely people at The English Provender have offered to send me a jar of their new Caramelised Red Onion Chutney.

The design of the jars has been recently revamped and now has a see-through label. It clearly says: "I have nothing to hide. Look at me! Can you resist me?" (at least that's what I think it says).

Apart from the obvious sandwiches and cheese platters, you can use the caramelised treasure to add a pizzazz to a number of dishes.

Just earlier today I have been baking croissants for breakfast. My hubby having a sweet tooth, wanted his pastries sweet, but I am more of a savoury breakfast girl.
So, my croissants were made with a dollop of the red onion chutney and a good chunk of the goat's cheese.

If you fancy trying the same, buy a tin of the Jus-Rol croissant pastry. Unroll the triangles of the pastry on the board, add the red onion chutney and top up with the goat's cheese (a chunk of brie or any other soft cheese would be a good alternative).

Roll the croissants, put on the baking tray and pop in the oven for about 10 minutes at 180C. If you don't want the cheese to escape the pastry, just tuck in the two ends.
A lovely breakfast, which beats a boring cereal any time.

The chutney itself has a beautiful rich colour & is full of flavour.

It also adds richness to a beef stew.

All in all, a versatile product at a very reasonable price.