Do Us A Flavour

Dear Robyn,

Today I tried out some of the finalists for the “Do Us a Flavour”  Chip competition Bluebird is running at the moment. The one where they let the public loose on designing winning potato crisp varieties. I entered it myself – my flavour was “Pan Fried Rainbow Trout with Lime”.

So now that there are four finalists with chips out in the stores I thought I’d put in my vote so I have been trying them – so far three from the four flavours;

Paua Fritters with Lemon Wedges
Sunday Roast (the Crispy Bits Left in the Pan)
Butter Chippin
Cheesy Garlic Bread

It’s quite remarkable how fast Bluebird got these flavours out. Do they have “crispy bits from the Sunday roast” flavour lying around in the lab somewhere? Just in case?….

The first pack I tried was Paua Fritters. I was quite keen to try this since my own flavour was also a seafood with citrus and to be honest I wasn’t convinced that could work on a chip. But surprisingly it does! Sort of like seafood dip does. And the chips really do taste like Paua. I’m quite impressed with this flavour because any kind seafood is my favourite food – EXCEPT Fugu (blowfish which the Japanese eat and is deadly poisonous if prepared wrong and I am not brave enough to play Russian Roulette with a fish) and Paua! Every time I’ve eaten it in the past I’ve thought “hmmm, great flavour, shame about the bits of rubber truck tyres”. Problem solved, bung the flavour on a potato and bingo – edible Paua without any automobile parts. I quite like the exciting, exotic flavour of this one and that you can’t get Paua anywhere else but NZ. So so far this one is getting my vote.

Cheesy Garlic Bread is not bad either. Actually also tastes pretty much like it’s title – mild cheesy flavour that’s been briefly shown a garlic clove. Just enough so it doesn’t run away screaming. It could easily be anything else though – chicken for instance. I am wondering if this one will win because the flavours are not particularly overpowering and it’s pretty easy to blob in front of the tele with a bag and realize you’ve munched most of it while you weren’t paying attention even though you swore you would only eat a few. The Paua one by contrast is quite citrus tangy and smacks you in the head so you can’t really think about anything other than what you are eating.

The last one I tried was Sunday Roast. I think this is a great idea for a flavour but don’t think Bluebird pulled this one off unfortunately. If it tastes like a roast then it’s a roast containing mostly pumpkin that someone cooked by accidentally putting it in a Tupperware container and melting it in the oven! And forgetting to put in the roast while they were at it. I think the spare chemicals Bluebird had lying around in the lab might have been “Sunday Roast With The Crispy Bits From The Pan Make By Your Inept Flatemate (606).”  Ate two chips and then felt sick so I’ve left the rest for Phil to polish off. Will be interesting to see what he thinks as foods always taste 100% different to him from what I think.

So that just leaves Butter Chippin which I haven’t seen in the stores. But it sounds interesting as it’s supposed to be based on spices like cinnamon, chillis, ginger and coriander which I love. So looking forward to seeing how that one works.

Anyway, what do you make of my Photoshopping efforts with the trout? You had to supply a “photo” with your entry but I don’t have ready access to Lake Taupo or fishing gear to land a fish for a photo so I grabbed a painting of one online and a photo of some swimming pool water and did some morphing to make it look somewhat like a fish underwater. After a bit of messing around with the components below I got the image at the top of this page.

Anyway, if you happen to try any of the chip flavours I’d be interested to hear which ones you like or think will win!

Morgan 🙂