Ice guy Gino’s not so fantastico S
Celebrity chef’s supermarket range is fine for feeding family
hopping in Iceland, I am officially out of my comfort zone.
My own freezer contains peas, spinach, ice cubes, mango chunks, raspberries, the Teenager’s lollies and ice cream, chicken bones, bags of homemade soup for pre-lockdown lunches and bargain meat. That’s pretty much it.
I have heard, on the back green grapevine, great things about Iceland’s vegan range. And if I was planning a barbecue for meat-free teenagers, I would certainly stock up on No Bull Steaks, No Chick Nuggets and No Porkies Burgers.
But the thought of an adult dinner of No Duck Spring Rolls and No Moo strawberry cones did not fill my heart with joy.
Moving very quickly past the frozen tripe, I looked at the luxury ready meals. And the Slimming World range.
The most appealing food in the chest freezers, however, was celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo’s range. His face prominently on every box, and the red, green and white of the Italian flag along the side, gave me hope.
He was born in the south of Italy, his grandfather was a chef and his TV appearances show that he knows about food. I piled up the trolley.
The flatbread confused me – which does not take much – as I think of it as a Middle Eastern wrapper for falafels, hummus and that sort of thing. This was focaccia’s thinner, crispier little sister.
The tomato and roast garlic version was, basically, an untopped rectangular pizza. The Teenager, picking at the leftovers, was enraged that there had been pizza in the house when he was out riding his bike. I had to show him the empty boxes to convince him I’m not a terrible mother.
The version with roast garlic and smoked provalone was richer and gooier, due to mascarpone that was visible on the ingredients list to people with better eyesight than mine, but not mentioned on the front of the box.
With a glass of cold pinot grigio, this made for very relaxed outdoor nibbling (with the Teenager’s choice of Fanta Grape – not so much). I regretted not getting two of each, some olives and prosciutto and leaving it at that.
It’s interesting that the packaging goes heavy on Gino and his Italian relations rather than the ingredients in the dishes. The cannelloni, for example, has Nonno (his grandfather) in much bigger letters than the spinach and ricotta inside the pasta tubes.
These were a solid airline meal version of a stone cold Italian classic. The Millenial was transported back to the time she
was sitting beside the galley on a long Emirates flight. I would have been happy with these on a flight. They were less exciting in the garden on a sunny evening.
The meatball shoutout goes to D’Acampo’s daughter, Mia. According to the florid blurb on the box, she prefers these to chocolate.
Mia has weird taste. These are perfectly edible but too big – spongy handfuls rather than gnarly single bites. Also, they need pasta or some soft, pillowy bread to mop up the tomato sauce which is not a world beater but does not deserve to be left in a puddle.
Aubergine parmigiana is the only box where the ingredients get star billing. As it should, the aubergine is a purple, shiny piece of magnificence and this is one of my favourite ways of eating it.
It’s a vegetarian dish even meat eaters like – in fact everything apart from the meatballs was meat-free. The packaging does not make a big deal of this, with a discrete V symbol. But it’s one of the factors that impressed me about the range - southern Italians eat a lot of vegetables and cook them brilliantly. This parmigiana was pretty good. The aubergine slices were thin and melty, no hefty chunks of vegetable matter here. Instead, they all but dissolved into the tomato sauce. Plenty of mozzarella equalled lots of stringy fork pull moments.
Carb Boy discovered quite a lot of the sauce on his T-shirt the next day. Gino does not mention which one of his relatives did the post-lunch laundry but I could take a wild guess.
Tiramisu was the only dessert in Gino’s freezer and, although I was almost tempted by the Arctic Roll, I was wilting. And unsure if a nostalgic reference to school dinners in the 1970s would be appreciated by the rest of the family.
His tiramisu was fine, with a visible sponge finger fossilised in the mascarpone mix.
In fact the whole experience was fine. Not memorable or exciting and not, despite the copywriters of Iceland’s best efforts, like sitting down to a feast with the D’Acampos.
But until we can fly to Italy, it did a turn.
Anna’s supermarket sweep is over. Next week, she’ll turn her tastebuds to lockdown takeaway meals.