About twelve years ago, while the house in which I now live was being done up, I spent almost four hours, quietly fuming, in wait for a couple of tilers. By the time they eventually arrived I was primed and ready for attack, but before I could open my mouth one of them approached, smiling, and said “Sorry we’re a bit late, we went fishing”. And handed me a salmon.

I can’t tell you whether they caught it legally or not, I didn’t ask, but I can tell you that it was absolutely delicious. I don’t think I’d had salmon as good before and I know I haven’t since.

It’s become harder and harder to get decent salmon. Wild salmon had become a rarity anyway, but the ban on commercial drift net fishing in 2007, though a very good and necessary step, now means we are largely confined to the farmed sort.

The French food writer James de Coquet had something to say about this: “Salmon are like men: too soft a life is not good for them.” And he was right, the easy life of the farmed salmon results in fish that is flabby and lacking in flavour. I’ve no comment on the men bit!

So although Lidl’s frozen salmon often comes in for a drubbing, I think, given the general low standards, it’s a bit unfair. It may not be anywhere near the standard of the tiler’s wild salmon, but it’s no worse than others which cost a lot more and it’s better than some.

If you are lucky enough to get hold of wild salmon, then the simplest of cooking is in order - grilled or fried in butter, served with mayonnaise and a wedge of lemon, it’s a true feast. But with lesser salmon a little more effort improves things considerably.

This is one of my favourite ways of serving it. It’s easy and quick, looks really pretty on the plate, and the ham and pesto bring flavour without overwhelming the salmon. It couldn’t be easier to make - it’s more assembly than cooking.

I let the fillets half defrost in the fridge, sandwich them around a generous pesto filling, squeeze over a little lemon juice and wrap in slices of Prosciutto. Then put them back in the fridge to fully defrost.

Wrapping them while they are still a bit stiff just makes it less fiddly.

Cook in the oven at 170°C for 20 minutes. Slice and serve.

These were served with caramelised leeks and a turnip puree and were lovely. Absolutely everything was from Lidl.

Tags: Pesto, Proscuitto, Salmon
Posted in Best Buys, Recipes | 7 Comments »

I’ve heard people complain that while Lidl cheese is cheap, there isn’t a big selection and it’s not uniformly good. There is some truth in this - sadly you won’t find any of the fabulous farmhouse cheeses being made in Ireland and there are not many speciality continental cheeses either.

Some of the real bargain basement cheeses are not that great tasting either, but then cheap cheese slices are not up to much no matter where you buy them. When Lidl recently had a go at Tesco’s value range, cheese slices were one of the products they highlighted. Lidl pointed out that their cheese slices had 51% cheese, while Tesco’s value slices had only 11%.

Now I don’t know about you but I was quite surprised to learn that any cheese slices were only about half cheese - but at just 11% I am kind of amazed they are allowed to call them cheese at all. Cheese flavoured plastic maybe?

Having said that the selection of cheeses available in Lidl is getting better all the time and last week I spotted some newcomers, or at least cheeses I’d never seen there before.

I bought this Double Gloucester but there is also a Stilton with Cranberry and Wensleydale with Apricot in the range, both of which look very good indeed.

This is my new favourite Lidl cheese.

Though somewhat softer textured than most Double Gloucester I’ve had, it has the lovely mature flavour and the rich butteriness that is characteristic of this cheese. The amount of onion and chive is just right - not overpowering, but definitely there. It’s very moreish.

I haven’t used this cheese for cooking yet - I am thinking it would be wonderful with cauliflower - but it is really really nice with some chopped scallions and garlic mayonnaise as a quick and simple lunch. Which is how I ate it yesterday.

Tags: Best Buys, Cheese, Lunch
Posted in Best Buys | 5 Comments »

One of the downsides of eating low carb is that it’s quite difficult to satisfy the occasional longing for something crunchy.

Crisps, tortilla chips and the like are out, cheese crisps are a great option, but my favourite low carb crispy treat has to be Chorizo Crisps.

They have just the right amount of satisfying crunchiness, are quick and easy to make and everyone, not just low carb eaters, seems to enjoy them.

Although I’ve tagged this as a recipe, it’s really too simple to qualify as one. All you have to do is slice up the chorizo, zap it in the microwave and leave it to cool. That’s it!

This plate holds a little less than 6 inches of chorizo sliced up. The whole chorizo, which costs €2.99 in Lidl is a bit more than 24 inches long, so you’ll get more that 4 times this many crisps from one.

They may not be the cheapest snack in the world but when you want something crunchy you really want something crunchy!

They took exactly 2 minutes to cook, on high in an 800W microwave. Your’s may vary - they look sort of dry in the centre when they are done, though are not crisp till they cool.

The crisps are very good scattered over salad, as a garnish for sandwiches or in pretty much any situation where you’d use crispy bacon. Exactly the same thing works perfectly with all kinds of salami, so there are lots of different flavours of crisp to try.

I made these ones for the wine tasting this evening, where we are having tapas, primarily using the various goodies from the current Iberian promotion at Lidl. I’ll be reporting on what people thought of them as well as the wine.

One of the things from that range that I picked up yesterday was salted roasted almonds, which cost €3.99 for 250g. I opened the bag to taste a couple. Big mistake. They are totally addictive and I’ll have to go back later today to get more!

Tags: Chorizo, Crisps, Low carb
Posted in Best Buys, Recipes | 14 Comments »

If there are still people labouring under the illusion that Lidl sells inferior fruit, just get them to take a look at this beauty.

And it tastes every bit as good as it looks - juicy, sweet, succulent, utterly delicious.

These very large pineapples from Costa Rica have been on sale for a while in Lidl for around €1.99, which I honestly thought was a tremendous bargain.

When I went in yesterday they were reduced to a truly amazing 89c. They were walking out of the store - I’d say half of Kilkenny ate pineapple last night - so there may not be any left, but it would be well worth a special trip to Lidl just to get one of these, even at full price.

You could easily eat all of a pineapple just as it is, but I’ll have a great pineapple recipe tomorrow, so you might want to keep a little to try it out.

Tags: Bargains, Fruit, Pineapple
Posted in Best Buys | 8 Comments »

Put ten Irish people in a room and ask each of them what constitutes a nice cup of tea and you are likely to get ten different answers. Strong or weak, black or with milk, milk first or last, with sugar or without, tea bags or loose leaf - there are almost infinite permutations and everyone has their own opinion on which is nicest.

I’ll come clean here: I don’t drink tea much. I’m primarily a coffee drinker, but I live with a genuine connoisseur of tea, who has very definite opinions about how and with what his cuppa should be made.

Tea bags for a start never cross our door. Tea bags are an absolute godsend to purveyors of tea, who now have a means of profiting from what were once referred to as “floor sweepings”, the broken dusty remains following the mechanical processing of fresh tea leaves.

That’s not to say that all tea bags are of poor quality, but many of them are. These are teas of the exact same brand, which is not a cheap one, but it’s still easy to see that the loose leaf version is not the same as the bagged one.

The smaller leaves in tea bags release their tannins rapidly, which can be an advantage because people want their tea FAST, but results in a more harsh and less subtle brew than would be the case with the the corresponding loose leaf tea. Smaller leaves have also lost most of their essential oils, which are what gives a tea it’s character, and poor quality teas contain a high proportion of stem or old leaf which never had much to offer anyway.

The point of this preamble is that there is at the moment loose leaf tea of real quality and distinction available in Lidl at a price that beats even the poorest quality teabags.

This sort of single origin tea is a different animal from blended tea, more subtle and distinctive in flavour and with piles of character.

These teas are less processed, you can see the leaves and they are all leaves, no stem. The term golden has meaning in tea circles, and is an indication of quality, not just colour.

There is no information on the packs about the provenance of the teas, other than their country of origin, but their appearance and taste makes me suspect that they are if not single estate teas then ones made by tea collectives of smaller farmers in the same region. They certainly have all the characteristics of teas of that type that we have bought in the past.

But how do they taste?

The Nepalese one is very much like Darjeeling, pale gold in colour and subtle in flavour, with a slight natural sweetness and very low tannin. Even those who normally take milk should at least try this one on it’s own. The Kenyan one is more robust, more like Assam, and has a slightly malty taste. It is a darker golden colour in the cup and takes milk well.

It’s not uncommon to pay upwards of €5 for small packs of gourmet tea, but these cost just €1.29. A spoonful of leaves will make a medium size pot of tea, or about three cups, and I reckon you’d make make about 25 pots of tea from a bag. So that’s less than 2c to enjoy a cup of something different, interesting and a little bit special.

There are not many of these left in my local Lidl and they are not a regular line - so go get your’s now.

Tags: Tea
Posted in Best Buys, Tea & Coffee | 10 Comments »