Pasty

So I was looking in Tesco for something nice and snacky for lunch. None of the sandwiches appealed, so I went off in search of a cheese and onion pasty, but they had none. They did have Ginster's Cornish pasties though, and that got me thinking. I used to like a pasty - indeed I spent most of my early summer holidays with my grandparents in Cornwall, so I've tasted a few good ones, albeit many years ago. There was a shop in Tavistock that sold some belters, and we'd often visit another in Plymouth when we went there. (These days I believe vistors to Plymouth mainly go to get into a fight with some sailors - or so I'm led to believe.)

So I thought I'd give it a go. I then thought about doing a comparison with something a tad posher. Tesco didn't have any, so I popped into Marks and Sparks and picked up a "Handcrafted Beef Potato & Onion Pasty". Not a Cornish pasty - it was made in Yorkshire.

The ingredient lists are similar - the main differences are that M&S use butter rather than vegetable oil, and there's vegetable bouillon and water in the Ginster's but none in the M&S (are Ginster's boiling the veg in it? Does that account for maybe 10% water content in the end product? Not a clue.) The proportions differ a fair bit though. Largest first, as is the norm:

Ginster's: Potato, wheatflour, Veg oil, British beef (14%), Water, Onion, Swede etc.
M&S: Wheatflour, unsalted butter, British beef (19%), Potatoes (14%), Swede, Onions (7%), etc.

No photos for this I'm afraid - I scoffed them in the park, and didn't have a camera on me.

I decided to start with the Ginster's. Rather than biting in, I broke it open so that I could see what I was getting. The picture on the wrapper suggests that you're going to get large quantities of rich brown meat with a smattering of veg. Needless to say this isn't entirely true - there's very much more potato and swede in strangely-thin chunks, and considerably less meat - and the meat is greyer and sorrier-looking and of questionable texture. Having said that it looks perfectly pleasant.

So let's get stuck in. Scoff! Hey! That's not bad. Scoff! It's actually rather good. A third bite confirms this. It's nice and savoury and quite tasty, but the flavour is mostly well-seasoned potato and swede, lent a savoury quality from the meat, if not actually tasting much of it. The pastry is OK too (I'm not a huge fan of puff pastry in general and would rather have shortcrust, but this will do OK). There's bags of black pepper here too which is nice. I quite like the texture of the thing too - the chunks of veg remind me somewhat of the pasties of my childhood, but they were much chunkier and more interesting, and there's something not quite right with these - they're a tad on the crunchy side - at a guess they've used waxy potatoes when floury would perhaps be better (waxy might be more resilient for whatever treatment they're giving them maybe?). It's not a massive issue, but it's not quite right. Not bad at all though overall. I single out a raggedy-looking piece of meat for closer consideration on its own. It's not especially nice - not actually unpleasant but it's veering a little close to a smell I recall filling the kitchen when my mum used to boil bones for stock. Not great. But the pasty is nice regardless.

This got me thinking - you could replicate this without the meat easily, I reckon. It tastes mainly of the veg, pastry and the seasoning. There's definitely some additionally savouriness, but you could fake that with umami-rich stuff like miso etc. The pleasure in eating this is mainly in the flavour of the peppery veg and pastry/combo, and the contrast between textures of the dry flaky pastry and the moist chunky potato and swede. So why on Earth can't I buy a veggie version of it? I tried a Quorn pasty out of curiosity a few years ago (criminally they didn't even think to call it Quornish) and it was hopeless - full of this brown sludge of mashed spud and quorn and tasting of largely nothing. Chunky veg, good seasoning, something meaty-tasting - you'd have something equal to or better than this. If I want a pasty I usually have to opt for a disappointing cheese and onion effort (in a blind-taste test with some of these (I'm giving M&S a particularly hard stare here) you'd be hard-pushed to identify either cheese or onion as an ingredient). I'm going to fire off an email to Ginster's, I reckon.

So with the Ginster's half way down, I turn my attention to the M&S one. I take it out of the wrapper - my fingers get wet with grease from the bottom of the pasty. Not pleasant, but probably rustic, or something. Again I break it open to get a look at the insides. Ew! It looks horrible. At this point I really regretted not having a camera (indeed, I did pack up and start to go home to fetch it, but it was such a nice day I didn't get too far before going back to the tree I'd been sitting under and cracking on). It was a smooth yellowish-greyish-brownish blob of matter with orange flecks of swede in it. They've done what Quorn did - smash all the ingredients up together into a stodgy lump of matter. It looked fantastically unappetising.

Oh well - I take a big bite. And then another one. Nope! Still not getting anything in the way of flavour. Or texture (beyond the pastry - which doesn't taste that bad, and at least provides a texture contrast to the "stuff" it has the misfortune to contain). This is completely anonymous. There's almost nothing there. It's got more meat and it's made with butter, but it's got so little flavour it's untrue. I can't even isolate a nugget of meat to give that a go on its own, because the filling's a homogenous lump. I take one last bite and then fling the rest away - it'll probably get scoffed by a magpie or seagull or a lucky neighbourhood cat. Rather them than me. And then I polish off the rest of the Ginster's.

So, in summary - Ginster's pasties are pretty good I reckon - certainly for ready-made snacky-happiness. I'm going to ignore the M&S thing entirely. So let's see - I think these are going in between corned beef and scallops. It's cheap and cheerful and easy and tasty, albeit I'm not sure how big a part the meat played in this. Scallops may well get a chance to rise above though should I have a crack at them cooked in a restaurant.

Hiatus

OK - bit of a gap. Lack of time. Lots of other things to work on. Other excuses.

I did try having a pop at bacon. I thought, what with the internet thinking it's amazing, and me not actually caring much for the stuff back in the day that it would be a revelation. Unfortunately not - didn't get on with it much, and the first couple of goes were exceptionally salty. I was so underwhelmed I didn't bother writing it up. Maybe I'll give it another go later.

Regardless, I do plan to continue - hopefully shortly. Not sure what I'll pick next, but I'll try to make in interesting enough to ensure a write up.

Chicken Liver Pate

When I compiled my initial list of meats I used to love, this one popped into mind quite readily, which surprised me a little. It's an odd one, and not something I suspect many veggies would list as a favourite meat. Thinking about it, this has to be about school lunchboxes. Corned beef probably had to be to a large extent too, but I remember making corned beef hash at university. I can't remember the last time I had chicken liver pate, other than lunchboxes. (This also raised memories of small glass pots of fish and crab paste that I don't even know whether or not still exist. I'm definitely going to find out, because some of it's going on the list if it does.)

So there's a good chance we're going back 30 years for this one. My memory's not one of my strongest points, so this will be interesting to see if I've remembered this correctly.

I shopped around a bit, but couldn't find anything that leapt out at me in the local supermarkets, so ended up plumping for a tub of this chicken liver pate with brandy and cranberries from the folks who deliver my weekly veg box. I've just realised I should have tried one of the local delis, but I guess I've come to think of them as cheese shops over the years so it never occurred to me. I also could have tried a butcher's shop, but I think about shopping in the butchers about as often as I think about shopping in the hat shop (I own no hats).

Under the lid, it's a little browner than I remember pate being, but then since I'm remembering lunch-box fillings that's perhaps not surprising. Thinking about it, the pate I've seen in delis has often been very-nearly grey in colour, so this is looking pretty good in comparison.

Preparation-wise this one's going to be nice and simple again - it's getting whacked on top of a slice buttered wholemeal toast - like so:

First bite, then - scoff!

Oh my! That's really good. Really really good. I'm tempted to make the rest of the post the word "Nom!" in the largest font I can find, but that would be a bit of a cop out. But then I'm struggling to find the words to describe this, and in particular why I like it quite so much.

Let's have another bite. Yep! That's bloody lovely. It's rich and smooth and really tasty, and yet somehow understated too. Still struggling to properly describe this though.

So, I polish the lot off - and I'm still struggling. The best I can come up with is that it seems like a meat equivalent of a really good cheese in a way. It's got a richness that's filling my gob in the same way a cheddar would, but instead of the dairy creaminess it has a meaty equivalent. I've watched enough Masterchef to know that Greg Wallace would call it iron-richness, so I'll run with that. Regardless, it's complex and interesting, and basically right up my street. So I pop back to the fridge for another crack at it.

In conclusion, I'm clearly not very good at describing it, but I sure as hell like it a lot. This is going straight to number one in the league, which I'd never have guessed beforehand. What's more my brain is getting a gold star for remembering it. So far, other than with scallops (where I'd like to try them cooked by a pro) I've not considered having another go at the other things I've tried after eating it for this blog. I'm finding this stuff nice enough that I may well revisit it later, or perhaps have a try of some different varieties. If I do decide to return to being a veggie this is one thing I will genuinely miss.

Reformed Herring Product

So it seems there's a category of meat I'd missed - the stuff I've never heard of before. I'd decided to have a pop at chicken or duck liver pate. (I can't remember the last time I ate it, but when I think about meat I used to like chicken liver pate pops into my head. I've only got a vague recollection of what it tastes like, so it's strange that it springs so readily to mind.) Anyway, I was in a Tesco Metro, and I didn't fancy the pate they had on offer, so was heading out of the meat, cheese and fish aisle with an empty basket, when some feckless dithering lump blocked my way as they struggled to think and walk at the same time. Forced to wait, I glanced at the shelf of fishy products nearest and spotted what looked like a jar of caviar. In a Tesco Metro? Caviar is (unsurprisingly) on my list of meats I haven't tried (or at least non-veggie products), so I took a closer look. Of course it wasn't caviar - it was the delightfully-named Onuga brand Reformed Herring Product. Seriously, look at the picture - Reformed Herring Product! It sounds like it was named by Google Translate on something originally written in Ukrainian.

With a name that appetising my hand was forced (despite a 50g jar costing nigh-on four quid).

From the label it's clear this is meant to be a cheap caviar replacement, but since I've never had caviar before this is going to be judged solely by how good it is as Reformed Herring Product. It's made from smoked herring, seaweed, salt, a thickener made from seaweed, honey, lemon juice and herring extract all coloured with vegetable carbon. Mmm! Herring extract and vegetable carbon - together at last!


Serving
With no blinis to hand, this is getting slapped on a piece of buttered wholemeal toast. I'll cut the crusts off to keep things a little refined though. It looks the part, I guess.

First bite - scoff! Salty. That's all I get at first, salty and slightly sharp. And then the fishiness comes through. Ew! Not too sure about that. It's not overly strong, but it's definitely there, and I haven't tasted anything even remotely close to it in twenty years. For many meats there are obviously veggie alternatives that at least have a stab at getting the taste close to the real thing. As far as I'm aware there's no veggie herring.

Let's have another go. Yeah - that's not getting any more pleasant. The saltiness is fine, and there's a taste of the sea briefly before the full fishiness turns up and that bit I'm really not a fan of. The texture is strange too. It's made of little balls of jelly, but they're quite firm and slippery, and don't easily pop or yield when bitten into - and instead tend to squirm away from your teeth.

I stick with it and finish it off. I like it a little less with each bite. That fishiness is just so alien to me now. This is a worry since two of the things on my meagre list of meat I used to love are fish (fish and chips, and peppered mackerel), as are loads of the items on the list of meats I've never tried. The fishiness of the Reformed Herring Product reminds me of the peppered mackerel I used to really enjoy, but if that memory is accurate then clearly my taste has changed quite a lot. I'm not looking forward to the peppered mackerel at all now.

With most of the pot left I'll perhaps have another go at this tomorrow, but I'm not holding out much hope. Bottom of the league for this, I reckon.

Sausages

So, sausages. As mentioned in the last post these are in my category of meat that I'm largely ambivalent about. I used to eat sausages of course, but don't miss them in the slightest. I grew up eating fairly cheap sausages. You could probably get good ones back then too, but I was either living with my folks, or buying my own as cheaply as possible at university so they passed me by. I get the impression the push for quality makes the high-meat content ones much easier to come by now. As it is I eat the occasional veggie sausage, but only Cauldron brand ones because they're actually quite nice, whereas many I've tried, such as Quorn, aren't (other recommendations are welcomed in the comments though). Until now I didn't know how they compare to the real thing though, because it's been so long since I ate meaty ones.

Buying

This is going to be a taste comparison between the bog-standard type of sausage I grew up with, and a really high meat-content one. (Unfortunately I couldn't get hold of any Cauldron veggie sausages at the time for a three-way test.) For better or worse these are the ones I picked (no idea how they stack up in the scheme of things).

The ones on the left are just 42% pork, plenty of water, and 10% pork fat. A pack of 8 weighs 454g and cost £2.00. The ones on the right are 97% pork. A pack of 6 weighs 400 grams and also cost £2.00.

Initial impressions

It's noticeable that the raw budget sossies are a soft uniform pink piggy colour to start with which is familiar and thus vaguely reassuring, but also clearly not at all natural. The premium ones are closer to the colour of a headwound - dark, patchy, bloody and meaty. They're also noticeably bigger and firmer.

Cooking

For this test I fried them in a pan with a tiny bit of oil to start them off. The pink cheap ones start browning quite quickly, and look faintly appetising all the way through cooking - they behave exactly as I expect sossies to. The meaty ones go quite grey at first and don't look particularly good, and then struggle to reach the same inviting brownness as their cheaper brethren. They do look more like real food though - less like a serving suggestion picture. It's noticeable that the low-meat ones have shrunk a lot during cooking too, whereas the premium ones have held up much better.

Presentation

Both sets of sossies go into standard buttered hot dog buns with a squirt of tommy ketchup. Normally I'd throw a load of mustard at these (and some onions preferably), but I don't want to risk overwhelming the sausages too much. Can't have a sossie without tommie k though.

First bite

OK, budget sausage first. Scoff! Blech! Ew! It's soft, spongy - nigh-on liquid by the time you're through the skin. Awful, awful texture. (This reminds me a little of the corned beef experiment where it was softer than I remember, but here it's much worse.) The taste is incredibly bland. It's definitely got a bit of the sausage flavour I remember from years ago, but why's there so little of it? It reminds me of perhaps the last meaty sausage product I bought prior to this test - some dreadful sausage-meat squares that I bought from a budget frozen food shop 20-something years ago whilst skint as a student. They were better.

Next up the premium one. Scoff! Crikey! Texture. There's lots of it. There's perhaps too much of it. It's firm and lumpy and not at all like any sausage I've ever eaten before. Perhaps a little uncomfortably so. But it's sooo much better than the cheap soft one. And the taste is so much better too. It tastes more how I remember sausages should taste (with added herbs) and less like cheap diluted scotch egg meat. I have to admit it's really nice.

Going the distance

I have another pop at the budget one. It's just not nice to eat. This has to be a lot worse than the ones I grew up with otherwise they'd be in a worse category for this blog. The texture's just wrong, and there's so little flavour. One final bite to be sure and I'm done. The rest of these are getting flung in the park over the road. If the foxes that live there are particularly desperate they might appreciate them. (I did return to the last bit of sausage later after it had cooled. It was a little less-unpleasant because it was firmer, probably because the high quantity of fat had set).

The meaty ones are a different matter though. These are really nice. The texture is still a little bit much for me, but the taste is actually really good. There's a little bit of meaty-strangeness both through flavour and oiliness to my previously-veggie palette, but it's not too off-putting, and I'll happily scoff the rest of these.

Comparison

The low-meat ones are bloody awful. The high meat ones are really nice. There is no competition.

Let's throw veggie alternatives into the mix then. There are parallels I'd not spotted before. I now get the impression that Quorn sausages are trying to be low-meat sausage alternatives, and Cauldron sossies are trying to be high-meat sausage alternatives.

It's been a fair while since I've eaten quorn sausages but from memory they're less sausage-flavoured than the low-meat sausages and strangely sweet to boot. Better texture though. Ideally I wouldn't eat either again though, and they're equally unpleasant in different ways, so I'm putting them both joint last.

So, high-meat sossie versus Cauldron veggie sausage - FIGHT! Flavour-wise - and this is from memory on the veggie ones - but I don't think there's much in it - I honestly don't. I'll give the meaty ones a small advantage, but it's mainly for some barely-definable satisfactiony-umami thing that I think is going on rather than the actual up-front flavour. They're herbier too, which is nice, so maybe the veggie ones are missing a trick here. I think the veggie sausage holds up pretty well though. The less-lumpy texture is nicer to me than the meaty one, but that may well be just me being unused to meaty chunks, but again I'll give the vote to the meaty one for a better skin and overall juiciness (the veggie one's skin can be a tad leathery and the not-meat filling a tad dry).


In conclusion

I'm a little surprised. Twofold. I thought the low-meat ones would resonate with me, but they're so nasty they couldn't. I suspect they're much worse than the ones I grew up with. The high-meat ones are so much nicer I almost can't believe any meat eater would choose the others. Value-wise I'd be very surprised if you don't end up with more meat for your money with the premium ones too - the budget ones shrank quite a lot.

However in the scheme of things, once I've scoffed the last of the premium pack I'll happily pick Cauldron veggie sausages instead. The meaty ones were better, but not by enough for me to warrant killing a pig to get. If any meat-eaters reading this are thinking of reducing their meat intake, I'd suggest it's at least worth giving these a pop. You won't catch me endorsing many veggie meat substitutes here, but I reckon those are pretty good.

Rubbish

So it turns out I'm a rubbish meat-eater. I did mean to have a go at sausages today. Sausages are in the final category of meats I'm planning on having a crack at - stuff that I used to eat but am pretty much ambivalent about. (To recap, corned beef was in the category "stuff I loved", pork scratchings are in "stuff I really don't fancy" and scallops are in "stuff I've never had".) I used to like a sossie sandwich when I ate meat, but I don't miss them particularly. And that's not because I've been scoffing veggie sausages instead, because most of them are rubbish. (Cauldron veggie sausages are quite nice tbh, but only from a tasty-sausage-shaped-food point of view - I'm pretty sure they taste very little like the real thing).

So I was in the supermarket looking at sausages to buy and I spent a fair while looking at them, and longer still trying to decide whether to buy really good quality ones or cheapo bog-standard supermarket ones. I felt I should go for the good quality ones to see them at their best, but I grew up with cheapo bog-standard ones, so that might be a better test. Anyhoo after about ten minutes of indecision these are what I left with:

Hopeless. I just didn't fancy the meaty ones particularly. And that's one of the things that made it relatively easy to become veggie in the first place - I didn't like that much of it especially. So here, with free reign to scoff meat I've ended up with cheese and leek sausages.

This ambivalent category might be tricky. The "stuff I loved" is easy, the "stuff I haven't had" is intriguing, and even the "stuff I really don't fancy" is at least a challenge - this is just something I don't particularly care either way about. Perhaps I should have started with bacon, which was my original plan. I've already mentioned that I don't particularly miss bacon, but back when I last had it the internet hadn't happened. The internet now seems to think that bacon is the best thing ever. So for bacon I'm at least curious as to why I don't miss it.

I will give the meaty sausages a go though - hopefully tomorrow. My plan now is to try both the quality ones and the cheap ones in a taste comparison kind of way. I gues I could also get a selection of veggie ones to try at the same time and compare the lot, but I think I fancy a quorn sausage even less than a pork one, so that might not happen.

Edit: The cheese and leek sausages were also rubbish. The fact that they weren't called Glamorgan sausages should have made me check the ingredients. They've got lots of chick peas and potatoes in them, and that's largely what they taste of. I've had things that weren't meant to be cheesy that tasted cheesier than these, and whilst I could get a hint of leek it was borderline homeopathic. You'd expect these to be called potato and chickpea sausages, and come in a pack with a warning on the back that they'd been made in a factory that uses cheese and leek.

Scallops

Scallops are the first thing I've chosen from my list of meat I've never eaten before. I chose them because they turn up endlessly on cookery shows on the telly, so I thought I'd see what all the fuss is about.


Buying

I did think about going to the local fishmonger to buy scallops for this test. For about 2 seconds. Then I remembered the smell of the place when I walk past it, and thought again. So I had a look around the local supermarkets, but all they had were pathetic specimens. In the end I ordered them from my veg box supplier - it seemed the best option, and they sell them with the corals on, which is what I wanted for the full experience.

So here they are. I had a quick sniff - they smell quite nice. The smell of the sea, not particularly fishy, and reassuringly fresh.

I'd already decided to have them with pea puree - I've seen them served that way a lot of times on cookery programs, and the alternatives ways generally threw more meat at them (black pudding, pancetta etc.) which I didn't want.

So for the pea puree I cooked frozen peas in vegetable stock and butter, blitzed them down until they were smooth, and then seasoned them with a little salt and pepper.

Next I fried the scallops, starting them off in olive oil, seasoning them, throwing a knob of butter in toward the end, and finishing with a squeeze of lemon.

Assembly - big dollop of pea puree in the centre of the plate, scallops on top, little bit of salad with balsamic vinegar dressing - job's a goodun.

So let's give these a go. First forkful (half a scallop (no coral) and some pea puree). And it tastes of pea puree. Except it's got a lump of strange chewiness in it that I'm not finding massively pleasant. Let's try the other half (again, no coral). Yep, pea puree, and a strange texture. Hmm - that's not much of a return for over a quid a piece. But there's still the coral. Ah - that's got a little flavour at least. It reminds me a little of cockles (in a good way, not in a gritty vinegary way which is my over-riding memory of cockles).

OK - let's scrape the pea puree off and try again with a naked scallop. Better, but not by much. There's a mild sweet pleasant taste from the caramelised outside, but there's very little else. It's a bit like chewy sea-air (only with less flavour). It's not unpleasant though, and as I polish off the second one I'm getting used to the texture a tad.

So I scoff the rest and all the time I struggle to find enough flavour to justify eating the thing. Beyond the caramelised bit I'm picking up almost nothing. And yet, and yet, and yet - there's something there. I tried alternating between the pea puree on its own, and then with a little scallop, and whilst I can't really pick up the scallop as a distinct flavour, the scallopy one seems to taste better. Odd.

I'm now thinking the pea puree was a mistake. It's quite sweet, and it's masking the scallop, and to top it all off I haven't got a sweet tooth at all. TBH - I reckon these would be better with some mushy peas which would be less sweet (you can treat this as a benchmark of quite how sophisticated I am if you'd like. There's a better one coming up shortly though...).

OK, time to admit that the report and picture above were from my second attempt at scallops. For the first attempt I tried cooking up a couple and, despite my boast in the last post, I messed it up a little - undercooking them a tad (pan not hot enough), and stupidly forgetting to add a little salt. The undercooking makes the texture a little worse, which then probably made the second batch comparatively easier to deal with.

So, that's six scallops accounted for, what did I do with the other two?

Stuck them in a sandwich - that's what.

That right there is a scallop butty, with tabasco sauce. And ketchup. Scallops and ketchup - together at last! TBH they don't fare much worse than with the pea puree. The ketchup hides them (I get a little of the coral coming through again) but it's much better than a ketchup sandwich would be on its own, even if I can't pin down anything specific that I'd call scallop.

Conclusion

I'm intrigued. There's so little flavour there, but the pea puree was better with them. I find myself wanting to like them, but they're not giving me much to work with. I'm tempted to give these buggers another go later, with something more to my taste alongside them. And if I find myself in a swanky restaurant I'd possibly give them a go so that I can have a pop at them at their best.

As of now though, they're not troubling corned beef for the top spot.