Smokin' Hot!

When my coupons arrived for the latest campaign for Orchard that involved Tesco Finest Cheese, I was excited to see what the range had in store.

My local store however only offered a small selection of the range and with being 4months pregnant I was only able to try the hard cheese as normally I would have gone straight for Tesco's Finest Goat's Cheese.

The first cheese that I opted for was the Smoked Extra Mature Cheddar which I have learned is produced by Wykes Farms in Somerset.

This cheese appealed to me as I am a fan of Applewood and as this promised a similar balance of flavours it was an easy choice.

The cheese is tightly packed and is not resealable, one of my main frustrations with cheese as you end up with lots of little packages made up of aluminium foil in your fridge, especially at Christmas time.

The cheese was fairly dry when I opened the packaging and it was clear the cheese had been smoked with the aromas that wafted out of the packet and the clear smoked tinge on the edges and throughout the block of cheese.

I cut a few slices off to try and was overpowered by the flavour. The strong mature flavour of the cheddar with the smokiness hit me straight away and I was unsure if I liked the taste. I had expected more hints of the cider to flow through the cheese but the actual taste was masked behind the smoked flavour.

I went for good old cheese on crackers to try out this cheese to begin with and was a bit unsure, I sliced it thinly, the cheese then went from the dry texture and found that it was a little wet and stuck to the knife when cutting which I think if left out to get to room temperature would make it more of a softer cheese such as the similar tasting flavour of Applewood, I did however, find that the cracker complemented the richness of the flavour of the cheese and would infact be a great addition to a cheeseboard.

I added a few slices of Black Garlic cloves to see how the combination worked with the cheese as it offered a sweet flavour and found it a tasty combination but again the actual cheese is very overpowering and when teamed with other foods can be a little overbearing.

I did find however that the taste stayed with me and left a pleasant aftertaste and would definitely be a cheese I would consider having in the future for special occasions.

As an everyday cheese however, I would have to avoid.

The day the Italian came to lunch

As a member of Tesco Orchard it was time to make use of the vouchers that I had used.

Browsing the ready meals there was plenty of choice but I wanted something to really challenge my tastebuds and settled on a cheese based dish as they are always something that I find lacks in flavour and always tastes more processed than other ready meal dishes.

I chose the Tesco Finest Chicken and Beech Smoke Bacon Pasta Bake which boasted on the packaging to use Italian Tortiglioni pasta with tender chicken and beech smoked British Bacon from outdoor bred pork, in a tangy sauce of Sardinian pecorino and lombardy taleggio finished with a crispy rosemary and sea salt foccacia.

Retailing at GBP3.60 in stores at the time of this review it is a high end ready meal so I was expecting big things in terms of taste.

As I do not own a microwave I had to look at the dishes to ensure that they could be oven cooked, this dish came in a foil tin so was only suitable for oven cooking and claimed to be ready within 20-25 minutes from chilled.

Piercing the film, I placed onto the baking tray and cooked for approximately 25 minutes.

One of my pet hates about ready meals is when you cook something in a tray and you cannot remove the foil when it is cooked and it tears into strips or you end up burning your fingers trying to find a piece that is easy to peel away from the container!

This dish was different, a clear piece at the end of the container that was to be used to peel the lid away and that it did with considerable ease.

I then served into a pasta bowl and set about enjoying this dish.

Although I had high expectations for this dish, somehow Tesco still managed to exceed them, the chicken tasted delicious, so tender and tasty not bland and chewy. The bacon, although I would have liked that to have been a little crisper the promise of Beech Smoked Flavour was not too overpowering and offered a subtle hint as you combined with the other flavours in the dish.

The pasta was tender and the sauce, deliciously creamy and cheesy as if it had just been freshly prepared.

Overall this has been one of the most enjoyable ready meals that I have enjoyed in a long time and as a high end product I think that Tesco have got it just right.