Sainsbury meatballs and mash

I think this is the worst so far. And the real culprits are the meatballs. Overprocessed pink mush with an aftertaste of pepper, they haven't even been browned, so they're like boiled cheap sausage (they have a meat content of 66% - and I wouldn't want to know exactly what parts of the animal go into that). The mash is overprocessed, too, and the gravy is predominantly salty. Nasty. What's worse is this meal is high in saturated fat and salt. In eating it, I've had 57.3% of my daily salt allowance. Something this bad for you ought to taste better than this. And the picture's a liar - there's nothing red and comforting in the gravy.  

Waitrose spinach dal

Back on Waitrose's Indian range, this probably would work better as a side dish, but I've just had it for lunch. It is different from the others, though, with a more astringent spicing, using mustard seeds (today's telltale ingredient) and fenugreek, which is why it probably would complement well the sweeter, tomato-based dishes. More than the others, though, this has a misleading pack photo. Here's how mine looked.

It seems almost axiomatic that these things turn out wetter than photographed. Also, I don't know what the pink things were in the pack photo, but I haven't got any. And, inevitably, the spinach isn't as bright green. But it's ok, you know. 

Sainsbury's spaghetti meatballs

This really shouldn't work and it doesn't quite. Everything's a little bit worse than you'd like - the pasta's slightly too soft, the meatballs are too finely textured, and the sauce, as always, is gloopy and generic. But it wasn't bad, just not exciting in any way.

On the whole, with these meals, I'm eating them as they come. Which means, in this case, no parmesan sprinkled on top, no basil allowed to wilt for a minute or two.

I wouldn't buy this if I had a proper kitchen. Spaghetti with meatballs is so easy to make, it really wouldn't be worth it.

Waitrose chicken jalfrezi

I ought to move on from Waitrose's Indian range. Although it's very good, there's a certain similarity about the sauce you get with each one. Today's meal continues the trend of being roughly as good as a take away, but with that pre-cooked homogeneity. It becomes apparent that the whole cardamom and clove are quite deliberate and semiotically precise: they're a sign of authenticity. The flavour they give could be simulated, and probably for some markets would be. Some people would find it irritating to have to spit out a cardomom. Waitrose makes a virtue of it. They say on the pack that "as a result some whole spices such as cardomom, cloves and cinnamon may still be present". Clever Waitrose.

The only other thing that I don't like about this is that the chicken is no doubt not free-range. I would never buy chicken to cook that was intensively reared. This is at least British, so it's not part of the awful international market in pumped up chicken-like meat product.

Waitrose channa masala

Not quite up to the standard of the previous meal, but still perfectly acceptable - as good as you'd get in a takeaway, for sure. The main problem is that the sauce is a bit one-dimensional in flavour - all the flavouring is homogenised into a pleasant enough background. That's really the difference between this kind of meal and freshly cooked food, of course. I ate this unaccompanied, for lunch, with a little brinjal pickle. Actually a poppadum would have been a good accompaniment.

(I'm probably making my life too easy by going for Waitrose products all the time. There has to be some real rubbish out there, like Tesco value range, which I ought to try. But I've got one more Waitrose product in the fridge, with an expiry date of tomorrow, so I'll do that first.)

Waitrose cauliflower and broccoli masala

This, on the other hand, was really very nice. The sauce had genuine flavours, and there were real curry leaves, cardamoms and a clove, proof that it's not made from some generic curry powder. It was rated as medium hot but was spicier than that normally means. The picture's actually quite realistic, perhaps a bit drier than the real thing. Only slight niggle was that the broccoli hadn't stood up well to the cooking process and it probably would be better if they replaced it with more cauliflower, which would also seem more authentic as an aloo gobi.

At a price of £1.89, it's obviously intended as a side dish, but there's easily enough here for a lunch.

I'd certainly buy this again, even when I have a proper kitchen.

Instead of bread

There'll be no bread for a few weeks. My kitchen is being refitted, and while that's in progress, all I have is a microwave oven. So this means I'll be eating more cook-chill food than I'd like. But it gives an opportunity to review the products I taste, so you don't have to.

So here's the first: Waitrose "deliciously different pearl barley and seafood risotto with yellow cherry tomatoes, salmon, king prawns & crab". This is the kind of thing I really ought to like. It's a worrying sign that the pack has to explain what pearl barley is. The meal is low in salt, fat and sugars, which of course means that you have to add salt to make it tasty. It's much too liquid to be called a risotto. There was a decent amount of salmon, and three or four prawns. I have to accept there was crab in there somewhere. Generally it was pretty tasteless, although the liquid has a bit of an aftertaste of bisque, which was quite nice. I forgot to take a picture of the cooked meal, but there was a bunch of rocket included, which was a bit mushy after the 4 minutes microwaving, and the tomatoes were of course pulped by it.

So, not impressed. If I were to buy this again, I'd remove the rocket and tomatoes before cooking, and add them back on serving. I'd add salt before cooking, and if possible get some sort of bread to mop up the liquid, and I'm sure some basil on top would help too.

This cost £2.75, reduced from £3.99 as today's the expiry date. It'd be really poor value at the higher price.