Black Knight (Cosford Food Fair) By @SpectreUK

Mid last year we had a good wander around the Cosford Food Fair at the Cosford Air Museum. It was pretty busy with lots of tents to pick up snacks and drinks. I came across a stall selling Ludlow Brewing Company beers, which is a family run brewery and was established in 2006. Not only did The Boiling Well beer that I reviewed a while ago jump into my hands, but this 4.5% stout just happened to pounce on me also. I figured then that a cold winter's evening would be perfect to enjoy it on…

Well, here we are; a cold damp winter's evening and I have the very same bottle of Black Knight stout right next to me. Looking at the label I was promised a roasted, nutty smell and a liquorice, sweet and smoky flavour. I also noted that the hops had been locally sourced from Little Lambswick farm nearby in Tenbury Wells. I could tell there was smokiness in the smell, as well as the promised nuttiness and roasted aromas. The almost jet black stout filled my waiting beer glass with no small amount of menace, reminding me of the name of this stout and where it came from.

Memories of visiting Ludlow Castle sprang to mind and thoughts of how knights of old must have pranced around on horses when the place wasn't a ruin, knocking each other off their mounts during jousting contests. It must have taken quite a brave good knight to face down the Black Knight. I was immediately glad that all I had to do was drink it! The promised liquorice was there in the initial flavour quickly merging with the roasted malts and smokiness, with hints of dark chocolate and nutty connotations. I found this a warming gloriously strong and tasty stout to be enjoyed on its own without the spoils of food, asides perhaps a black coffee and some dark chocolate for afters.

The Chocolatier’s Box (M&S) By @Cinabar

This fantastic looking box of chocolates was a Christmas gift from my mum. They were from Marks and Spencer and are known as The Chocolatier’s Box. They look very posh, the box is covered with ribbons and they are presented in a beautifully decorated gold box. The gold theme continues once the box is opened and the chocolates themselves look like golden jewels. They are so pretty it seems a shame to eat them, but I battled on!

Sri Lanken Ginger Caramel
The first chocolate I tried was one of the smaller square ones, decorated with circles on the top. Inside the chocolate shell was a liquid caramel flavoured with ginger. The spice was warm but not hot, and it was balanced by the flavours of dark chocolate. Im not the biggest fan of ginger but if all ginger chocolates tasted like this one, then I would be.

Charcoal Banana and Smoked Sugar Caramel
Next up was the large gold chocolate, which is remarkably shiny. The flavour was rather yummy, there was a gentle taste of sweet banana, an unusual hint of smokiness and to finish a gentle spice of cinnamon. They are not flavours that you'd expect to work together but they do. The chocolate was a delight and the hint of cinnamon was genius.

Feuilletine and Fleur De Sel
This chocolate is oblong in shape, but again decorated with gold. It was also sweeter than its salty name would have you think. I liked the emphasis on the sweet, with the background salt, and thought it worked well. The texture was also lovely as it had lightly crunchy biscuit bits.

Fig and Caramel
This was another square chocolate, with a green hint. The shell seemed thinner on this chocolate, and broke delicately when I bit in. I wasn't sure what to expect from a chocolate flavoured with fig, but the caramel took centre stage and enhanced the sugary nature of the fig. There was a fruity taste, but it ended up reminding me of a halloween caramel apple, as the toffee taste was so dominant.

Chai Latte
Being a cinnamon lover, I do like to drink a Chai Latte, so this round gold splashed chocolate seemed up my street. The flavour was amazing, and this soon became my favourite in the box. The chocolate is actually white underneath the coating, and it was just so fragrant and aromatic with flavour that you felt you had to concentrate to fully appreciate its complexities. The mix of coffee, cinnamon, spices and white chocolate was pure heaven.

This really isn’t a box of chocolate for scoffing, the flavours are so very different to chocolates I’ve tried before and each one deserves a moment of appreciation. The carefully chosen flavours are a taste adventure, delicate, clever and absolutely delicious. I’m going to have a look in Marks and Spencer and see what other chocolate delicacies are available, I had no idea they sold such a creative range.

Did you get any unusual chocolates this Christmas?

Snowy Lodge - Belgian Chocolate and Gold (by @NLi10) from @Lidluk

I don't like Christmas Pudding. This is because I'm not a fan of raisins, sultanas and generally dried fruit.  This means I tend to buy, eat and review alternate Christmas puddings.  I found one such offering in Lidl.

It's full title is Snowy Lodge - Belgian Chocolate Sponge with a Shimmering Clementine Centre. 

Let's blame TV for all the adjectives and call it choc pud.

The choc pud also comes with a large packet of gold glitter, as if the house didn't already sparkle enough now your intestines can too!

 

You can steam the pudding, but frankly 2 mins in the microwave for the whole thing works too and you get this.

 

This looks brown, and very curvy, and smells amazing, but let's take them at their word and decorate.

 

Boom. A great centrepiece for any table, a sprig of gold holly would have set this off perfectly.

Inside the golden goo is similarly sparkly and runs fantastically when hot, but soon sets on contact with the ice-cream that we chose to mix it with. It's much lighter than it looks, but still the 4 portions on the box is very accurate - you won't manage this one solo. We had just under a third each and there are portions to be had after dinner tonight,

The taste is that of a lovely steamed (ish) chocolate pudding.  It's just sweet enough with the help of the clementine goo and ice-cream to be indulgent without being too sickly. It certainly passes the dinner party test, and it tasted amazing and certainly filled us up. I'd be very happy if Lidl have more of these left to pick up!

Raw Coconut Water (Waitrose) By @SpectreUK

This Raw Coconut Water produced by Rebel Kitchen, in London, is made from 100% young green coconut water. I drank old brown coconut water when I was a child. My mom had bought a coconut from the local supermarket as a treat for my dad, who hadn’t had a coconut since he’d been a child and moved back from Trinidad many years before. His dad had been an engineer and had moved the family there for some years whilst working on some project or other. My dad revels in telling me anecdotes of the period, such as when he’d seen a massive Anaconda slithering into a river whilst he was on a rowing boat. He said it was so long that it more than spanned the river from one side to the other.
I remember the old brown coconut water didn’t particularly taste that great. It had been pretty murky white in colour and was a bit flat and tasted of old coconut. This young green coconut water is actually pink in colour. Sourced from young green coconuts from local farmers in the Philippines, this drink is 100% raw, unheated, and untreated coconut water. It tastes of slightly sweet mild raw coconut, which is probably what you’d expect and very fresh tasting indeed. Suitable for vegans, and a good source of potassium, with 22 calories per 100ml, 4.9g of sugar and 0g of fat and negligible salt, this 250ml bottle seemed like a healthy pick-me-up in a hot office on the first afternoon back to work. Good for a happy, healthy new year.

New Burton's Cheesy Chips Crisps (Pound World) By @Cinabar

When I was at university one of my favourite canteen meals was Cheesy Chips. It's not a complicated meal, in fact “meal” might be pushing it, but that simple addition of grated cheese onto a plate full of deep fat fried chips was absolute heaven. I’m not sure I can justify its nutritional content, but from a flavour combination it was food of the gods.
Clearly I’m not alone in my love of this food as the new flavour of Burton’s Fish and Chips is Cheesy Chips. Once I got these home and inspected them a little further I realised that the partly crossed out heading at the top of the bag was a little misleading, and these are in fact just cheese flavour Burtons. The subtlety of making them cheesy chip flavour seems to have been lost.
That said they had a nice taste, the cheese flavouring was pleasant, not too strong, and with just tiny hint of sweet. They were not too musty, and the taste wasn’t in your face. It works well with the biscuity snacks, which were still shaped like fish and chips. I think Wotsits have the edge on cheese flavour snacks for me, as I prefer a stronger cheese taste.
These were nice though not my favourites in the Burton’s Fish and Chip range, but I’ll happily work through the rest of the bag. All I have to do now is find a cafe that sells cheesy chips, and see if that dish tastes as good as I remember. Or buy a deep fat fryer and do it myself!