29 December 2013

Leftovers (home made preserves) [Review by @NLi10]

It's the 29th of December - one of those limbo days where as it's fallen on a weekend nobody is quite sure what they should be doing. We popped to Asda, and then caught up on the Christmas telly that is clogging up the digi box.  I sense a board game this evening may be in order.

For Christmas I was given two coincidental presents of home-made origin in matching jars - chutney from Kailash on the left and Blackcurrant Jam from Stacey on the right.  They are balanced on the promo card from a future review so that I don't get jam everywhere...


As it is clearly left-overs season and home-made preserves are great as a side for this kind of thing I decided that I would use them for this.  To make it a fair evaluation of the products (and because I don't really have many leftovers as I tend to eat at other people's houses over Christmas) I bought some nice fresh ciabatta to heap them onto.



Rocket and pesto humus was added to the chutney one, where as the jam was expertly spread onto some butter thing we had in the fridge.


I ate the jam first as I suspected it's flavour may be the more delicate of the two.  I was right and this was a lovely sweet blackcurrant flavour.  It was more of a jelly than a sticky jam and still had decent berries inside to give it a great texture.  I may have to make some scones to go with this, as it felt too good to just use up on toast or sandwiches. I like the idea of using sweet fruits as a side topping to cold meats (cranberry jelly for example) so may be decadent and have a few lunches with this.

The chutney, which I believe was apple and cranberry, was potent as expected.  I'd presumed that it would be spicy, but was much more tangy and no less nice for it.  I'm glad I added a few other things to it, the chutney easily overpowered the rocket and the pesto flavour was almost invisible.  This I think would also go well with the cold meat plates and half pork pies that I have pictured.


Most of the leftovers and things I've acquired over Christmas have been sweet, and mostly chocolate based.  This is all good - I love all these things - but a little home made touch that enables the 26th to 30th turkeyfest that usually occurs to be more varied and exciting is a fab idea for gifts.  As I know we are having a similar event for New Years (with the family traditional huge ham) these will be put to very good use indeed.

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