A perk of the job…

One of the most important parts of my job at the women’s magazine where I work is to suck up to the food editor. After all, he needs to know he has a Deputy Receiver Of Free Stuff he can trust!

Okay, so I’m not always the first person to get the freebies that land on his desk (he has this strange sense of fairness that means everything gets shared out equally in the office…), but last week he did hand me an interesting looking, British-made chorizo, from a company called The Bath Pig.

I left it in my fridge for a few days, because I knew, as soon as I opened the packet, it would be a matter of minutes before the whole thing was gone. And I was almost right.

I started off by adding some to a grilled pepper salad (pictured above), which I took to work for lunch yesterday. The chorizo had a very nice, strong, paprika flavour, but, in my opinion, needed to be slightly more oily. It was very dense, which is great, but just very slightly too dry.

Although, that certainly didn’t put me off making a determined effort to finish it last night.

For supper, I fried up some more slices alongside a clove of garlic and a few scallops, then put them on top of braised leeks, added a squeeze of lemon juice and a handful of chopped parsley, and mopped it all up with some lovely, warm, crusty white bread. Frying the chorizo made it very crispy, and a bit bacony, but this actually went really well with the soft sweetness of the scallops.

Despite my concerns about the texture of this chorizo, I did think the flavour was very authentic. I bought another British chorizo last year, from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s online shop, and I have to say that The Bath Pig one was definitely better.

So, if you do come across it, why not give it a go.

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