Coffee Spritzer Drink (Marks&Spencer) By @Cinabar

This new drink from Marks and Spencer is essentially a coffee flavoured pop. Yes, it is in a posh bottle, and it is definitely aimed at adults, but they say Coffee Spritzer and I hear coffee pop.
The bottle was even sealed like a wine bottle with a wrapper around the twist lid. The drink is brown in colour and I poured some into glasses, it fizzed as I did this. I took a sip, and got a bit lost for words. If you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Of course that attitude isn’t great for a review blog, so let me try and explain. There is an initial hit of bitter coffee, like the flavour is about to go somewhere, and then the water takes over and the flavour never gains momentum and is just washed away. It leaves in the mouth a strange taste on the taste buds, vaguely like sweet coffee, but it isn’t pleasant as it so watered down. The fizzy bubbles reminded me that something almost happened. Weirdly, I’d put this down as a frustrating drink, and I’m afraid I didn’t manage to finish my glass.
As you can imagine Marks and Spencer food hall is a favourite place of Foodstuff Finds. There are usually items that are different and intriguing and they should be praised for their spirit of adventure. This means they are willing to give things that are a bit different a go, to be fair they have a lot more hits than misses, but this new Coffee Spritzer has left me blank on finding nice things to say.
Give me an iced latte any day ahead of this. Heck, I’d rather have water.

Biscolata - like Dreamies, but for humans. (@NLi10)

We used to get something like these in the UK, they were in small bags and the pictures on them were very cartoony.  They were moreish, but the chocolate centres were always a little hard and never as goes and luxurious as on the packaging (if anyone with a functioning long term memory remembers these then please let me know in the comments).  Turns out that these Kwik Save snacks were probably a knock-off version of these Biscolata.

Made in Turkey, but fully in English with our very own pound-sign printed on the tub AND suitable for vegetarians these are a confusing thing to find in an import store.



And the fact that it says 'emotive pic on every one' but hasn't used emojis suggests these have at least some heritage.



And sure - the pictures on them are not quite perfect, but the rest of them certainly is.



The shape is playful and begs to be eaten in a variety of ways.  The biscuit is crisp and has light and dark patches which have a lovely baked flavour to them.  And most importantly - the creme filling isn't hard - it's actually properly runny!

Maybe twenty years on the food science industry has found out how to put actual chocolate creme into biscuits successfully, or maybe it was always meant to be this way.  I'm willing to bet that the rest of Europe is already clued into this one and is happy to be eating these for years (after all in warm weather the chocolate doesn't go everywhere like most of the things we can get away with).  For us though this must be how cats felt when Dreamies were invented - perfect little crispy shells with a gooey addictive centre.  A total win.

Wild Bill’s IPA Beer (Aldi) By @SpectreUK

I'm sure Wild Bill Hickok would like the idea of a beer being named after him more than 140 years after he was shot in the back in a saloon in Deadwood before he could play his 'dead man's hand'. From reading up on him he definitely liked his notoriety from being everything from a wagon master to gunfighter to professional gambler and actor in his lifetime. He was one of the coolest characters in the American Old West, and richly deserves to be remembered.

This 5% volume IPA was brewed by Marston's Brewery especially for Aldi. The 500ml bottle mentions biscuity malts and spicy crystal rye malt, as well as American hops that were used in the brewing to add a peppery and citrus flavour. On opening this amber beer I could certainly smell the 'biscuit' malt with a fruity citrus undertone at the back of the aroma. On flavour there's the malted barley to start with which mixes well with the spicy sweet rye malt. This is closely followed by the fruity citrus zest from the American hops and an almost peppery spicy kick into the afternoon. Just like Wild Bill's Navy Colt six shooters firing off somewhere in a saloon in the sky!

Mexican Fiesta Pizza and Cinni Dippers (@Dominos_UK) By @Cinabar

Mexican Fiesta Pizza
It had been a while since we last had a Dominos pizza order, but when a new menu was pushed through the door with new goodies in it, it meant we sort of had to, for Foodstuff Finds you understand… Ok, turns out we didn’t need much arm twisting. The new Dominos pizza is called the Mexican Fiesta Pizza, and although I was a little worried that the pizza would be hot (as in spicy), we decided to try it out. The pizza comes topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, peppers, and is topped with a sour cream and paprika drizzle. The peppers are just green and red peppers, so there isn’t much heat at all, just a nice spiced flavour from the paprika. The chicken was still moist and juicy, and peppers and onions had a decent crunch and flavour. The sour cream mixed things up adding a nice cool taste too. As I’m not into all things hot, this was spot on for me. It was very flavoursome, and the mix in textures and the addiction of the chicken made it a very tasty treat.

Cinni Dippers Dessert
We had the other new item on the Dominos menu for dessert, the Cinni Dippers. From the picture online I had imagined that these Cinni Dippers would be sticks to dip, what actually arrived was a small round (pizza style) bread covered in brown sugar and cinnamon. It did have shallow cuts in order to split them into sticks, but they weren’t very even, which meant trying to share a portion was bit more awkward. We ended up pouring the icing dip over the top of the pizza and then splitting it up, this was bit sticky, but worked well. The icing stayed runny, even after we had eaten our pizza and come it a little while later. Disclaimer alert, I am a huge cinnamon fan, but these were absolute heaven! The spice was just right, flavoursome, but not hot and the icing sugar made them lovely and sweet. The bread was a nice and soft and easy to eat. This really was my perfect way to finish off a pizza meal.

Making authentic curries with real naan at home* (@NLi10)

*yeah - I bought the curry paste and the naan from local shops, but I did all the cooking!


While shopping for the items for the Disappointment Wars review I happened to pick up a little Indian red onion to go with the Patak's Korma Spice paste that I'd picked up earlier in the week.  I'd been meaning to try and make a reasonably authentic curry as an excuse to buy fresh naan from the shop by the bus stop and eat them all the way down the hill back home.



Realistically you need this jar, an onion, a tin of coconut milk, and whatever it is you want to put into the curry.  For us this was a selection of veggies, and some of the lovely Frys vegan strips.  Essentially it was like a vegan version of a chicken korma, which was great.  And if I'd spotted that it was designed to serve 8 then I wouldn't have made quite as much!



Here we see the mix before the coconut milk goes in, the onion has been reduced with he curry paste and the house will smell amazing for days.

The veggies had water in them, the frozen vegan strips had water in them, and we added the water the recipe recommended so it was a little soupy, but my goodness it was fantastic.

Two naan each (it's 4 for £1) with what was essentially two persons worth of curry each was quite a lot to handle but I did manage to get there in the end.  Something I am certainly going to try again - and the fresh Indian red onion was used to great effect! I did learn why so many people bring left over curry in to work though - if I'd thought ahead I could have used a few more robust ingredients and frozen the extra portions too!

Definitely something to try during the warmer weather, and one that's almost begging to be shared with friends.