As you all know a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to win a picnic from Higgidy filled with lots of vouchers to try some products out. Well I decided to try the Little Smoked Bacon and Cheddar Quiche with my Higgidy voucher. When I ate it I found it to be lovely and cheesy, very creamy with a really lovely texture, it was one of the best quiches I’d ever eaten so when we were looking for a snack the next weekend I decided to get another for myself but my experience couldn’t have been more different. Each slice I took from it produced large stringy bits of onion stuck to the knife and there was even more onion still in the quiche itself. I don’t mind onion in a quiche but for me I prefer it to be either a hidden ingredient and cooked really well into the custard part or almost raw so it’s crunchy, I really don’t get any enjoyment from eating a stringy slimy piece of onion and so I wrote to them and asked which type of quiche was normal. They responded that my second one didn’t sound right but they could see nothing wrong from their end and offered me a voucher to purchase another product which I accepted and it arrived within a couple of days.
Last week Dave had a trip out with work so I planned ahead and used my voucher to get myself something (hopefully) delicious for my tea. I still felt a bit concerned about the quiche’s so I decided to try a pie and after reading the reviews on it I plumped for the Chicken Pot Pie with Ham and Leek
Sorry the pie’s not in the box but it’s only really after contemplating my experience that I’ve decided to write this and I thought I’d throw in a photo to break up all the text ….. it was either the box, or a cute one of next door’s cat!lol
Anyway, I cooked (or heated) the pie as per the instructions and have to say it smelled very lovely when it came out of the oven. Now I know I’m probably slightly odd here but I love the puff pastry tops on pies so I always cut them off and save them till last!lol But it was once the top was off I noticed just how much creamy leek was in the pie. I decided to fish about in the filling and came up with 3 small (about 1.0 x 0.5 x 0.5 cm) chunks of chicken and 8 tiny (0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 cm max – some smaller) cubes of ham and the rest of the pastry case was filled with leeks in a creamy mustard sauce.
I have to admit here that the pastry was gorgeous, the chicken (what little there was) was lovely and moist, the ham was a bit tasteless and just hard and the cream sauce was very tasty. The leeks themselves however were not nice, the few I tasted were not cooked well, they were kind of plastiky in texture but they filled up around 2/3 to 3/4 of the pie and so I found it to be mostly inedible and even Dave (who will eat most things) said he wouldn’t have eaten it when he got home and saw what I’d had to leave.
Now, I know and understand that there are always discrepancies when products are made, not everyone can be the same but when I purchase a CHICKEN pot pie, I expect the primary ingredient of the filling to be CHICKEN not leek and especially when they charge £3.50 for said pie. So for me, I’m never going to take the chance again, out of 3 experiences I’ve had 2 which were awful and even though the first was excellent, I really don’t feel like I have any trust left in the company and felt I wanted to share my experience and my opinions with my friends.
Kim's Wins 