All posts by Armand

Food

Waitrose green Thai chicken soup review

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Description: “A warmly spiced soup of choi sum, British chicken and coconut with ginger, lemon grass and chilli.” Hells yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

Health: Erm, not great. 460 calories for the pot, loads of fat and sat fat, quite a bit of sodium. On the plus side, reasonable amount of fibre and protein.

Taste: Awesome! You can smell the lemongrass from across the room even as it microwaves, and whilst the texture seems a little weak on initial pouring it thickens as the soup cools from boiling (the all important “let stand” period). This soup is tasty, well textured, spicy, meaty and full of useful chunks of veg – deliciously soft and tasty choi sum and still-crunchy water chestnut that actually serves a purpose in this context!

Full-o-meter: Good, as you’d expect from a more substantial soup.

Verdict: 4/5. It loses a point for health. Otherwise this soup is outstanding.

Food

The Yorkshire Provender – ham, savoy cabbage and lentil soup review

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Description: Ham, savoy cabbage and lentils in a crushed tomato soup base with plenty of other root vegetables in there – carrot, swede, celeriac etc. Full tasting notes from the manufacturers are here :-).

Health: 245 calories for the pot, with a pretty good amount of protein, relatively low on the carbs and fat, and a decent score on fibre. A fair amount of salt but not bad by Eat standards! In essence: pretty good! It’s also gluten, wheat and dairy free for people who care about those things, and organic too!

Taste: Impressive meatiness from the ham, great texture from the lentils and cabbage, satisfyingly fresh and crunchy. A really good flavour combination for savoury lovers. Only criticism, and its minor, is that the soup is a little brothy… could use a bit more thickening… but a very minor complaint!

Full-o-meter: Not bad. Whilst a relatively low calorie count and a slightly smaller pot than your typical supermarket soup pot (500 vs 600g) the decent amount of fibre and protein should keep you going.

Verdict: 4.5/5. Will look out for other tasty soups from the YP folk, although they do seem to be focussed on organic veg-only options which I’m not a huge fan of…

Technology

The new Apple iWotsit…

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I don’t need it. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I’m confident that all my communications, entertainment and computing needs are currently met, perfectly happily. If anything, I have a surplus of communications and entertainment tools and media. Too many ways to get in touch. Too many ways to watch TV, film, see photos, listen to music, read books, email, call, Skype etc., on the move.

But damnit, I’ll bet that whatever Apple release tomorrow I’ll want. Because smug and self-satisfied as Mr Jobs is, his company is awesome at design and fantastic at getting us to ‘need’ things for no reason other than they’re beautiful and elegant. I’m not a Mac, though… that’s one thing I’ve managed to hold firm to.

Cross posted at Chivalry House.

Food

Waitrouse beef goulash soup review

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Description: “A creany soup of tomatoes, minced beef, potatoes & rice.” Hrm, ‘cream’ is slightly misleading as cream isn’t in evidence from a flavour perspective, but the single cream does give a smooth texture to the soup as a whole… I didn’t notice the rice, either, but that’s not a complaint.

Health: 398 calories for the pot, which is OK, but reasonably carb heavy – relatively low protein and fibre – and a decent score for sodium.

Taste: Wow. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this that much, having only barely liked Eat’s Goulash… but this is really nice, bolognaise esque (well, the way I make it – which is tomato intensive), with tasty morsels of beef and good quality tomatoes making up the majority of the flavour with the occasional lump of potato for the occasional dose of bland (not a massive fan of the potato when it hasn’t been fried or roasted).

Full-o-meter: OK. Not great. The texture and consistency fills you up on eating, but I have a feeling the nutritional content will mean it doesn’t last the afternoon.

Verdict: 4/5. It’d get a 4.5 if they had a way to get more fibre and protein in there without substantially upping the calorie score. Good on you, Waitrose.

Internet, Software

Firefox 3.6 permatabs/pinned tabs

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If, like me, you have 3-4 browser tabs you like to have open all the time (Gmail, Greader etc), then the Permatab and Faviconize add-ons are for you… unless you use Firefox 3.6, out a couple of days ago, which breaks the former.

A little Googling this morning found me App Tabs, a great alternative. Recommend it.

Whilst I was searching, I also found this info on how to turn on the CTRL-TAB tab preview feature in FF 3.6 – which is pretty awesome.

Food

Waitrose chunky vegetable soup review

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Description: “A hearty and warming soup of carrots, swede, green beans and parsnip with red lentils and pearl barley.”

Health: OK – only 236 calories for the pot so additional sustenance required, but good on all key vital indicators.

Taste: Meh. No interesting spice, no meat for texture – nothing wrong with it for what it is but just totally uninspiring. If they’d swapped out sweet potato or butternut squash for the regular potatoes in there that would have been something.

Full-o-meter: OK. Not great. Too low-cal, not enough protein to really carry you.

Verdict: 2/5. I’m sure it’d rate higher for someone that liked plain vegetable soup, but for me it was a bit dull.

Food

Marco Pierre White glorious Toulouse sausage and bean cassoulet review

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Description: “A hearty broth of haricot beans and sautéed Toulouse sausage, finished with vegetables and herbs. GLORIOUS.” Actually, this one is fair enough.

Health: Not bad – 394 calories for the pot, good amount of fibre. Could have more protein…

Taste: Better than the other two MPW’s I’ve tried recently – good texture, flavourful, tomato-based soup, delicious morsels of sausage and the beans are nice too. I know Rick Stein loves a good cassoulet and suspect he’d struggle to recognise this as one, but it is nonetheless good and hearty as a fresh soup pot.

Full-o-meter: Not bad. Better with more meat…

Verdict: 4/5. The first MPW soup properly worthy of the name. Suggest Mr White has a chat with the people at Glorious Foods swiftly…

Film

More commentary on The Infidel

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Chris Hasting at The Sunday Times writes about The Infidel and another film, weighing up humour against the risk of causing offence to the Jewish and Muslim communities.

Over at the Independent, Arifa Akbar interviews David Baddiel giving him the opportunity to explain some of what he was trying to achieve with the film:

“I wasn’t interested in writing about Muslims and Jews per se, but I am always interested in tackling subjects that aren’t being tackled, just for the sake of newness,” he told The Independent. “Because people have become terrified of giving offence, religion and race are now rather left out of comedy.

“For me, it becomes fertile ground. It’s very much about race and culture and ethnicity, in a very gloves-off way. But it’s not trying to cause offence: I’m very uninterested in that as a writer.”

Sideways News and The Daily Telegraph talks through similar issues, whilst George Pitcher, The paper’s Religion Editor, calls it “…almost the most important film of the year,” in a blog post.

I’m totally excited. For those who haven’t been keeping up, this is my brother’s latest film, starring Omid Djalili and Richard Schiff, written by David Baddiel. It’s out in April and should be awesome. My review, such as it is, lives here.

Food

Marco Pierre White Glorious Moroccan tomato and chickpea soup review

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Description: “A Moorish tagine-style soup naturally thickened with chickpeas and couscous, finished with traditional spices and a hint of fruit. Glorious!” Again, their copywriters need to calm down.

Health: Not bad – about 390 calories for the pot, high fibre, low fat, but quite low protein too and reasonably high levels of sodium.

Taste: Bleh. I’m beginning to wonder if the addition of “-inspired” or “-style” to any description is an admission that they don’t really know how to spice the soup properly. This soup, whilst well-textured, is pretty bland and the absence of any proper spice or meat makes it a slightly tedious meal. In the interest of full disclosure I should confess that I gave up on it half way through and nabbed a passing sandwich from a lunch meeting I was in.

Full-o-meter: Not bad, was the impression I was getting before I lost interest…

Verdict: 2.5/5. Not getting the strongest impression of the MPW range…

Food

Marco Pierre White Glorious Indian chicken soup review

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Description: “A warming curry soup with tender pieces of chicken breast, red pepper, coconut cream and authentic indian spices, finished with coriander. GLORIOUS.” I think the descriptions writer got a bit curried [sic] away!

Health: 404 cals for the pot, which is OK, but low fibre, high sodium, middling protein makes this a bit average.

Taste: Less good than the first time I tried it, I think. The soup is a bit thin and suffers from the absence of a strong binding veg in there (some potato or some curried squash or even a few more lentils). The salt-level, whilst not overbearing in the taste, is headache inducing.

Full-o-meter: Not brilliant. Not thick and substantial enough without bread.

Verdict: 3.5/5. Downgraded on original verdict now that I’ve given it a full review.