Your ViewsKeep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions. To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin). Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com | If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay! | Your e-Mails |
Andy Jenkinson |
I read, with interest, your opinions on fig rolls - and the bake-then-cut / cut-then-bake debate. I am currently favouring Sainsbury's-own (bake then cut) complete with ridges. This delightful temptress or a biscuit has a fine dunking consistancy and is ideal as the base for my own 'chocolate coated fig rolls'. [If there was every a biscuit waiting to be made, this is it.]
Along with the chocolate garibaldi this is my only attempt at 'home cooking'. (Although I am not exactly sure if melting-chocolate-and-coating-stuff-with-it can count as cooking). The ridges on the figrolls act as a splendid trough for the chocolate, biasing the coating to the top, and allowing for a relatively thin coating all over, yet both the fig roll and the chocolate get a look in when vying for your tastebud's attentions. [Compare the chocolate covered garibaldis - when coating only one side is all that is possible before the chocolate taste dominates].
Perhaps one day my chocolate fig rolls [fig-o-lates?] will be commercially avaialble, and cast before your expert eye/mouth. Do you know any 'Dragon's Den' style venture capitalists looking to break the biscuit market?
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Nicey replies: Aren't fig rolls terrific! Given my current diet status all fig rolls sound brilliant whatever is going on with them, so I'm in. I don't know what Theo, Duncan, Deborah, Peter and the new chap think. Duncan Bannatyne could flog them in his health clubs to people as they leave the gym. |
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Jon Stone |
The fig roll, my favourite biscuit of that there is no doubt. But does anyone recall Jacobs attempt at launching chocolate fig rolls? They were the normal ridged ones of the time that had been propelled through a shallow (c. 1cm?) river of milky chocolate, resulting in the bottom half of each biscuit getting coated. Ooooh! These were fantastic, I was a real fan, but they lasted only about 2-3 months, maybe 6 as I recall, living in the East Midlands of the UK at the time. My favourites now are the extrusion variety you get at large supermarkets and find they improve for a bit of drying out.
cheers,
Jon stone |
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Kevin Sowerby |
Nicey,
I’ve been following with interest the thread of the elusive chocolate garibaldi. I can assure you that the biscuit did exist – in both plain and milk chocolate form! Many years ago in my youth, I had a weekend job at the local Waitrose supermarket, who stocked the cherished biscuit. This was late 70’s/early 80’s. The brand was ‘Chiltonian’, a brand that seems to have gone into obscurity, just like the biscuit. The plain chocolate version was my particular favourite; I always think plain chocolate and dried fruit go together well. The biscuit always worked better if kept in the fridge, just to keep the chocolate on the firm side. It also made separating the next biscuit from the garibaldi strip a little easier and stopped your fingers getting covered in chocolate.
I’m now living in the States, where any good biscuits are hard to come by, although the Yanks do make some acceptable fig rolls (can’t eat a whole packet of those though!). Like my fellow expat in search of the ‘Dundee’, my electric kettle also raises some eyebrows. It was the last one in the store and the shopkeeper still gave me a discount to take it off his hands. It takes ages to boil using this weak American electricity but it still makes nice cup of tea, with a British tea bag of course. They don’t know what they’re missing!
Keep up the good work,
Kevin |
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Fuhr David (Mr D) |
Fig rolls are the work of Beelzebub. Revolting chewy gungy things.
They are also responsible for destroying the essential "al dente" nature of other biscuits. I once made the mistake of putting a single fig roll in a tin with biscuits of many other persuasions. Within 24 hours it had completed its satanic work - every other biscuit in there had gone all soggy and disgusting. And the fig roll was unchanged. I consider this to be proof that fig rolls are evil, and must be eradicated.
Also: You should be aware of Peperidge Farm "Nantucket" chocolate chip cookies. Oh. My. God. Expensive, very bad for you, but incredible.
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Nicey replies: Thank Fuhr David (Mr D) for your opinion. Of course the best way to eradicate Fig Rolls and prevent them altering the micro climate of the biscuit tin is simply to eat them all in one sitting. Presumably your chocolate chip cookies are expensive because they incur a journey to "Nantucket" to buy them. |
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Eleanor Oguma |
Most gratified to find your site and the fig roll special today, the day when I discovered that my local foreign food shop here in Niigata now sells Lyons' fig rolls.
On the Arnotts of Australia theme, in addition to Tim-Tams (rather nice, but I still prefer the Penguin), Arnotts do a v.nice chocolate-covered mint-cream-on-Penguin/Tim-Tam-type base biscuit. Unfortunately they don't tend to travel well in the post, and get stuck together. Surely there's a market for biscuit coolers for sending chocolate biscuits in the post to those of us living in foreign climes? |
Nicey replies: Woo, we've not had an email fro Japan before. Do you think you could persuade the locals to include biscuits in the tea ceremony, I'm sure they would approve. |
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