New in the Kitchen March 2016

March is a funny time of year in the kitchen. Sometimes it’s warm and sunny and you’re waiting for the first asparagus of the year. Other times it’s cold and raining and you just want to eat pie and mash. As always, it’s nice to have new products to try as it gives me an excuse to cook up something different or new and try something I might not have tried otherwise. This month it’s a mixed bag of yoghurt, fruit, juice, pesto and cake!

I almost always have plain yoghurt in the fridge. It’s so useful to serve with curry or chilli, a good snack and always good for breakfast. Sometimes I get a bit bored of plain yoghurt and want to have something different with my breakfast. Rachel’s have their core range of yoghurts to choose from and also release limited edition flavours from time to time. The most recent one that I tried was their Greek yoghurt with honey. I really liked how thick this was and thought the amount of honey was just right; not too sweet but with plenty of flavour.

These two fruit pots from Nature’s Finest made me think of my old school lunchboxes, it was nice to reminisce and also nice to see how they have changed from how I remember them. These two flavours, mango and pineapple, actually come in coconut water rather than fruit juice. The fruit gave the coconut water a really lovely, subtle flavour and it was nice to have these for lunch at work. I popped them into the fridge to have cold so the juice was more refreshing.

B fresh juice popped up on last month’s ‘new in the kitchen’ post where I tried the carrot juice. They have since sent me the other two flavours to try: green warrior and rock the beets. All the juices are noticeably different to others on the market as they are mostly vegetable juice rather than fruit, meaning they are much less sweet which is a really nice change. Also because they are cold processed they retain more of their goodness than pasteurised juices. Of the three I tried I think the beetroot was my favourite; a fantastic colour and the combination of beetroot, apple and lemon was very invigorating.

I am a big fan of sunblush tomatoes; if something has them in or on I’ll be hard pushed not to try it so I was really looking forward to trying out this sunblush tomato pesto from Sacla. The pesto has a great sunblush tomato flavour and as it’s a pesto you can afford to be a bit more liberal with your spreading/spooning. I have tried it with mozzarella in a toastie and I thinned some with a little olive oil for dunking bread in too, I’m also planning on dolloping some on a pizza soon. These little pots to boost your Bolognese sounded like an interesting idea to me. As I make Bolognese using lentils, rather than beef mince, these little pots really add an intense umami flavour to the whole dish and I think they’d be really good in stews and tomato sauces too.

This little cake came from Baker Days and would you believe it came courtesy of the postman and fit straight through my letterbox! The cakes are customisable so you can choose the design, change the name and what flavour sponge you have. I have to admit that I was a little dubious as to what the cake would be like but I was really pleasantly surprised. The icing wasn’t too thick, the presentation was really nice and the cake itself was very tasty. I think this would make a lovely gift for someone; how great to come home and find cake on your doormat!
Thank you to Rachel’s, Nature’s Finest, B fresh, Sacla and Baker Days for the samples. All opinions expressed are my own.