My friends sometimes think I only eat fresh, homemade produce and whilst I would love to say that’s true, I think everyone now and then just wants something easy (especially when you’ve just done your food shopping). Tonight we had a couple of pizzas from the fresh Pizza Express collection in Tescos. Spinach & Ricotta and Apollo Pesto. Also had a sun-dried tomato flat bread from the Tescos chiller. Add a pre-packed rocket salad and some Moruno Tescos finest tomatoes. So far, all from a major supermarket. My argument for the tomatoes is I can’t find anywhere local that does anything other than your basic tomato. The tomatoes I have to say are lovely, could eat a barrel load of them, sweet and so flavoursome. This basic meal was made pretty amazing by the simple additional of some basic ingredients.
First I added some Balsamic vinegar, Riserva di Famiglia from Acetaia Dodi. Amazing vinegar, not from the Modina region where your usual will come from in the supermarket. We met these guys at taste of Christmas in 2008. Nice guys, let us taste every age of balsamic and they were from the actual company in Italy. That’s dedication for you.
Then drizzled a little White truffle olive oil. Okay I know this stuff can be expensive over here. We had the pleasure of recently visiting Sicily and got our oil fr om there. I have to say it is the best I have ever tried and that includes samples from places such as Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Selfridges. My advice is try Oil & Vinegar. They do a superb white truffle oil and it’s better value than the major supermarkets (and tastes better in my opinion). If you’ve never tried it, go to Oil & Vinegar, they always have some on their sample table. It is the most expensive oil they do but well worth it. Don’t cook with it, drizzle a little (you really only need a little) on salads.
Then two ingredients from Cassidys Deli in Great Dunmow. Balsamic onions. They are just taste bud blowing. Came across this type of onion in the Selfridges Champagne bar. Have bene searching high and low for them since then and luckily Cassidy’s started following me on Twitter recently so I went to see them. Also got some Stuffed chillies from them, Small chilli pepper stuffed with a cheese and herbs.
Cooking time in total – 15 minutes.
An off the shelf dinner stepped up another level by some easy simple additions. That really is all it can take sometimes to impress your friends or just have a snack that’s different from the ordinary.
P.S. Just gone back to the fridge for more tomatoes.
