Saturday 2 October 2010

Jamie Oliver's spinach and ricotta tortelloni

As I've probably said before fresh pasta parcels are often a default dinner for me. They're quick and easy but do sometimes suffer from a flavour fail. I quite liked these Sainsbury Taste the Difference ones, but they weren't exactly setting the world on fire. Enter Jamie Oliver. He's now put his name (and indeed face) to a range of fresh, handmade pastas which I spotted recently in Tesco. I thought I'd try the traditional sounding spinach and ricotta tortelloni, as it's a classic combination that it's hard to go wrong with but can be quite dull.
The first thing I noticed was that these tortelloni were huge- almost the size of my fist. And there weren't very many of them- this concerned me. However on closer inspection the pack was the same weight as other similar products. I think I prefer having a greater number of smaller things rather than a couple of giant items on my plate. But that's just me.

So anyway, how did my dozen or so tortelloni taste? Well actually pretty good. I just dressed them with some olive oil and black pepper, and the flavour of spinach and nutmeg came through pretty well. The cheese filling tasted much stronger than just ricotta though, and on examination of the ingredients, Edam cheese made an unexpected appearance. I suspect there are some Italian nonnas spinning in their graves, but it was tasty and added a bit of density to the filling that I quite liked. The pasta itself was relatively light and not too claggy, so all in all quite enjoyable and certainly good enough to be a quick post-work dinner.

Jamie Oliver Spinach and Ricotta Tortelloni
I rate it 7.5/10

Cost: Around £3.50 (possibly just about enough for two if not starving)

4 comments:

Nora said...

They do look nice, but I agree that it's better to have a lot of something smaller - feels like you get more for your money. I came across some of Jamie's British pancetta, which I thought was a great idea and was rather tasty.

TheFastestIndian said...

Yes- exactly! Tried the tomato and mozarella version recently too, which had much smaller size parcels, and much preferred it. I'm usually a bit skeptical about celeb-endorsed food products but JO actually seems to be doing a good job!

grimblefish said...

I concur that the tom and mozarella one is nicer. The walnut and gorgonzola ones on the other hand are a bit rubbish and disintegrate as soon as they hit boiling water.

I also feel that the whole range would be somewhat improved by the removal of Oliver's stupid gurning face from the packaging.

TheFastestIndian said...

Hello dear, good point about the gorgonzola one though to be fair you may have cooked it all wrong.
I don't really mind about JO's face being on it either.