Prego Rolls and lemon peel in steak marinade

The Diver prepared some Prego Rolls for a recent lunch. 

I will track down and post the exact recipe, but the marinade for the steak involved garlic, red chilli, lemon juice and lemon peel.  The steak is fried then removed from the pan and kept warm while the the bits from the marinade are fried.

The roll is then composed as shown in the old-school cross section diagram below, plus a photo of the sad view that results when greed overcomes the needs of this blog.

Ciabatta Roll

Black Pepper

Rocket

Vine Tomato

Peppadew Pepper

Gravy

Fried bits of marinade

Steak

Butter

Ciabatta Roll

So, basically a steak sandwich, but what elevated it to bloggability was the genius of the marinade.  The combination of garlic and chilli is always a winner; it was the lemon that surprised me with how much it added to the taste. 

Within the roll there are two types of flavours: the warmth of the steak/garlic/chilli/tomato/pepper/gravy flavours, and the summer time freshness of the rocket, tomato, and fresh bread.  The success of mixing these two flavour groups while still being able to taste each one independently lay in the use of lemon peel. The oils in the lemon peel helped the lemon flavour to meld with the butter, which drew the lemon freshness and summer flavours into the richness of the butter and the warmer flavours.  It has to be tried to understand just how good this is.

It rates 8/10, had the ciabatta been heated it would be an easy 9/10.

I'd like to try this marinade with lime peel and juice instead of lemon; I think it would add a more oriental flavour, the best bread and salad ingredients for this one will take some thought.

The Chocolate Apothecary

Last weekend The Diver and I decided to do some exploraration on the Isle of Wight. A failure on both of our parts to grasp the finer principles of using a bus service led to an unexpected visit to Ryde.

Here we discovered 'The Chocolate Apothecary', a very promising looking wood panelled cavern lined with chocolate displays and a sign proclaiming "I'd give up chocolate but I'm no quitter."



http://www.chocolateapothecary.co.uk/index.html

Although the cafe looked a good place for hot chocolates etc we were ultimately in search of a lunch destination, so we settled for some chocolates to take away.


Here is what we got and the verdicts:

Salted Caramel- too fragile and gooey to go in a bad, these cups of golden goo had to eaten straight away (of course this was a hardship!) A nibble on the beautiful dark and white chocolate cup revealed the distressing cardboardy taste of inferior chocolate. The caramel itself tasted exactly like manjar- this is a Chilean version of the Argentine favourite Dulce de leche, also known as banoffee toffee. While this was tasty, it was too sickly and did not have the subtlety of flavours I would expect from caramel.

43% Ghanian Chocolate truffles- The filling hit a good balance between sweetness and cocoa depth, was was marred again by the chocolate cup it came in; the excellent quality of the filling only highlighted the disappointment of the cup.

Hazelnut Praline Cups- the praline was very liquid, actually more like a thick syrup, and more translucent than would be expected from a classic praline. This meant the texture did not have that smooth crumble-richness I love so much, while the taste was something like a suary nutella. It also came in a chocolate cup which I have discussed above.

In summary, it rates at 5/10. The idea and shop front are great, but with the prices they charge they should definitely consider either enclosing chocolates in a thicker cup of better quality chocolate, or in paper cases. The possible small drop in aesthetic value would be far outweighed by allowing their fillings to shine, especially if that salted caramel is made more grown up.