The lovingly rendered artwork on the front of the sachet doesn't give much away as to the contents of this mash. A few fresh peas in a pod, some artfully scattered currants, and a few mint leaves are tossed in front of a bowl filled with a foul green mush. Not one cute, fluffy baby sheep, alive nor dismembered to be seen. Turn the pack over, and you find a different story altogether, however. 'VEGETABLES', declares the ingredients, first off. Sweet potato and carrot turn out to be most prominent, unsurprisingly, with only 8% pea, with an added 0.01% mint to add flavour. The total lamb content comes in at 6%, less than both completely unannounced apples and water, but more than ground rice. At one percent (ie less than the component of quinoa in most quinoa containing baby foods), the black currants seem to be present only to give the impression that 'whoa, this food is such a whacky combination!'
The food itself gives a good impression of that pictured in the aforementioned bowl on the packaging
art, except that to fill such a bowl from a 120g sachet, it would have to be quite a small one indeed. Mainly a sickly yellow-green, and coarsest granular rather than mashed, but with the occasional fleck of purple-black: is that evidence of a currant skin? A fleck of lamb? Some stray chia seeds from another organic batch? A fleck of paint off the hipster manufacturer's thick framed glasses? Who knows. Surprisingly, the smell is strongly of peas. On the odd occassion I may trick myself that I smell the slight whiff of mint, but then it's gone again, dashed into the rocks of realisation that this is going to be another disappointingly bland taste test.
The taste is strongly of mushed peas. The subtle mint smell is decimated by the starchiness of the sweet potato base. There is a vague hint of the texture of a few strands of pulled lamb, but the flavour isn't strong. I held long in my mouth, vainly searching for some meaty quality, but alas, this only exposed me to an after-taste, no, an after-texture of the discarded shells of peas across the roof of my mouth. This is not pleasant. In fact the closest I could describe it to is the feeling you get on burning your mouth, popping the resulting blisters, then playing with the loose flaps of skin left behind by the
destruction.
To be perfectly honest, I'm really disappointed by this food. The description, the packaging promised so much. Even with the named ingredients constituting only 15.01% of the total recipe, I was hoping for a puréed delicacy. Instead, I got blister mouth. This is not a lamb dish. It is a sad pouch of mushed peas. You could warm it up and serve it with soggy fish and chips in a poorly lit pub in northern England.
In fact, you could feed it to vegetarians. They wouldn't know the difference.
3/10.
