Last month I went to Jamie Oliver’s, The Big Feastival, and had a fantastic time sampling produce from some of the artisan stalls. One of which, and the one I spent the most time at was Ross & Ross Food. Ross & Ross Food is a company based in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, that specialise in making potted produce from locally sourced ingredients. It’s run by two lovely guys (both called Ross), one a former gastro pub manager and the other a former head chef.
They had a mouth-watering array of terrines and pâtés on display at the event, and I had a good go of sampling quite a few of them. I was really blown away by the quality and taste. I’ve been writing the blog for a year now and it’s happily at the stage where I often get asked to review all sorts of products (I accept the ones I genuinely fancy trying). This time round it was me doing the asking as the terrines that I had tried were so amazingly delicious, that I wanted to see if their other products were just as good. I hadn’t tried their chicken liver parfait or pork rillettes so they very kindly sent me those. And they didn’t disappoint.
The chicken liver parfait had an incredibly smooth, light and creamy texture with a lovely hint of Madeira – there was Port and Brandy in it too. I slathered the parfait on toast and it took all of my willpower not to finish the 100g jar in one go, which I so easily could’ve done, but I wanted to savour the taste for another time. And the taste was great – absolutely loved it! It also came with a cute, little 35g jar of red onion chutney, a great match for the parfait.
Just as good was their pork rillettes, a similar type of product but very different in its structure. The pork was made using slow-cooked, hand-shredded pork and had a more robust, meaty texture, packed full of porky flavour with a hint of thyme. The matching accompaniment to that was a jar of smoked apple chutney. It was quite tangy, and when eaten with the rillettes brought out the flavour of the pork even more, which was all good in my books – the porkier the taste, the better.
Both products are made using free-range pork and chicken livers, with no artificial flavours, preservatives, colours or hydrogenated fat.
Ross & Ross’ chicken liver parfait and pork rillettes retails at between £4 – £4.50 for the single jars and £5 – £5.95 for the duo packs with matching chutneys. They are currently available at Harvey Nichols, and within their local area of Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. For more stockist info call: 01608 645503.
Many thanks to Ross & Ross for sending the tasty samples.
(Photo by Ian Tierney)
this sounds really really nice, i like most chutneys and i think the chicken liver parfait might be nice with an apple chutney? 🙂
OMG, it’s so so good! Don’t know about pairing it with apple chutney, but it def works with a red onion one. Nowt wrong with giving it a go though 😉