Friday October 23, 2020 – 01:06
Being a 420 Friendly, Process Nerd, Foodie makes for some interesting highs. Tonight, the ingredients of the high were a blend of Chem Dawg and Cookies Indica with two pinches of Strawberry Sativa. It was one of those highs that was just hilarious across the board. I’m hoping I can do justice to the story so it’s not a had to be there kind of situation.
First, something you should know about me. I love pastry. I’ve never had truly fancy French pastry but it’s definitely on my bucket list of things I want to do one day. Even so, I like pastry enough that I regularly bring grocery store pastry into my house. Today was one such day. The pick? Apple turnovers. They were bought from the No Frills in our hometown and they were manufactured by Del’s Pastry. Now, where to start… Oh, got it!
No Right to Call Yourself Pastry
Daaaaang Del’s “Pastry”!!! You done fell off! Listen, I’m under no delusions about my level of bougieness. It’s there, I’m at peace with it. In a perfect world, yeah, I have pretty expensive taste, I’m a bit particular with certain things. What can I say? It comes with having a high attention to detail. That said, I grew up on Del’s “Pastry” and I always remember it being pretty tasty. Even though it’s been a while since I’ve had them, I know I’ve had them as an adult. So this is not one of those memories where I just didn’t know what was good because I was a child.
By now, you’ll have noticed the word pastry in quotation marks. That’s out of deference to all of the edible pastries in the world and I definitely refuse to put these… insults to the very idea of food in the same category as the aforementioned bucket list pastries. To call this oily piece of cardboard masquerading as something edible pastry would be playing way too fast and loose with the delicious experience that is real pastry.
Oh, you think I’m exaggerating huh? I guess I can see how you might think that. When I think of pastry I picture something like this…
It’s golden brown and delicately flaky. You can see that there’s filling inside. That’s what’s up. Yes, fine, these are homemade and if you’re going to make homemade, it should look delicious or what’s the point. But there’s a LARGE gap between homemade, flaky deliciousness and the product that Del’s “Pastry” and No Frills felt were up to snuff.
When my roomie, who had done the shopping came home from work I had to tell him how terrible a product had been purchased. I said something to the effect of, “Those are the WORST “pastries” (I really wish I could say I did air quotes here) I’ve ever had.” We then proceeded to get high, which is something of a regular occurrence when he comes home from work.
Thence came the following saga which I’m calling The Dissection of the Garbage Compaines are Trying to Pass off as Food.
The Pastry Itself
A good turnover has two main components; the filling and the pastry itself. We’ll start with the pastry since it’s the first thing you see.
The first thing I noticed is that the pastry was hella dry. Also, there was this after-residue left in my mouth. The next thing I noticed was that the pastry to filling ratio was garbage. Waaaay too much pastry waa-a-a-aay too little filling.
The Filling
This brings us to the first point for the filling. If you’re looking at this picture and asking, “What filling?” We’re way a head of ya.
I noted to my partner in pastry investigation that it didn’t leave you feeling like you ate anything with apples in it. The flavour was flat and hardly noticeable. Without missing a beat my roomie replied, “That’s because there’s so little of it.” He wasn’t wrong. Of course, the only thing to do next was to open up one of these “turnovers” so that the filling could be tested independently of the “pastry”.
Upon peeling back the soggy layers of pastry I began laughing almost hysterically because, well… look at this garbage! I’ve never seen a piece of food that looked so spectacularly like it had already been eaten.It looks like a diaper full of anemic crap. Talk about appetizing! I decided to take pictures in different lighting. I wanted to see if there was any possible way to make it look even worth tasting. Alas, this “turnover” represents the D&D players of the pastry world. As you can see, no change in lighting was enough to make these look yummy.
15 minutes after deciding the filling had to be tasted alone, having taken pictures and discussed at length how gross it looked before we finally got around to tasting the filling.
I went first and my roomie burst out laughing at the look on my face as the mushy, tasteless, grainy ‘apple’ filling made it’s way across my tongue. Just, ew! When he took his turn, his expression reflected my own. “I think Gerber baby food probably tastes better than this,” he said. I’m like, “Who bakes anything apple without cinnamon!?”
The Ingredients
The realization that I could taste no cinnamon prompted me to look at the ingredient label.
“Spices”, it says. Spices!? Where the eff are the spices? Scroll back up, if you will, and look at the pictures of the open pastry. There is absolutely zero evidence of any kind of spice. If the label says spices but you can’t see them and you can’t taste them, did they ever actually exist?
The rest of the ingredients that were put into these so-called turnovers didn’t do anything to help the situation. Palm oil I try to avoid just on principle. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you should look into it. Also, there are three different instances of some palm oil ingredients. Really, you needed it in three different formats?
Tasteless Junkfood
One rule of junkfood. If a food item contains little or no nutritional value, IT MUST BE DELICOUS. When an item contains 41% of your daily recommended intake of fat, two and a half teaspoons of sugar and almost zerio nutritional value, it has only one job? Make me want to eat it anyway. Between the unappealing look and the almost completel lack of flavour Del’s “Pastry” has failed on both counts.
Best Served Warm
While looking at the ingredients I noticed something else. Apparently, Del’s Pastry believes that this sorry excuse for food would be tastier if it was heated. Never one to leave an investigation any less than thoroughly explored, we headed into the kitchen to put one of the pastries into the microwave.
At this point, I was fully into cooking TV show host mode. I watch competitive cooking shows like Master Chef and The Great Canadian Baking Show on the regular. So, when the pastry came out of the microwave after a quick zap, I decided I was going to do it up right and cut the pastry with a knife for tasting.
Initially, I was going to grab a butter knife but then thought twice and opted for a steak knife. My roomie absolutely burst out laughing because the “pastry” was so tough that even using a steak knife required considerable effort to cut through it. Sawing motions were necessary. I shit you not.
Once again, my Process Nerd side took over and I realized I would have to see how cutting went with my kitchen knife. If you’re a cook, you know which knife I’m talking about. Every person who really preps food has one. It’s your go to knife in your kitchen. You use it every tie you cook. If you’re like me, you even sharpen it every time you use it.
This would be the true test. I made the cut… well, kinda. My sharpest knife got about three quarters through before stalling out and I began laughing at how ridiculous this was. You should be able to cut through any kind of pastry with the side of a fork and my kitchen knife could get through!? What the actual fuck!?
Just to make absolutely sure there were no holes in my experiment, I decided to test my favourite knife against something that should have been a little harder to get through. In the fridge, I found a lemon. Perfect! The tough rind of a lemon is the kind of thing that will always let a cook know that they’ve been neglecting their knife.
The knife slices through the lemon quickly, cleanly, and with almost zero resistance, exactly as I expected it to. The same knife couldn’t easily get through this “turnover”. Yikes!!!
More on the Pastry Itself
There were just so many problems with the pastry. The dough itself was overworked which is part of what made it so tough. I’d be really interested to see the manufacturing process for these items. Because the impression I get is that they made the pastry phyllo style where you have sheets of pastry with a brushing of liquid fat between layers.
If there are any pastry aficionados reading this post, please reach out and correct me if any of this is off. BUT, from what I’ve learned over the years of watching baking shows, here’s what I think was the issue. Phyllo pastry works because each layer is paper-thin. It’s also a different texture than the pastry that was used to make this… garbage masquerading as food. The texture of phyllo pastry allows the fat to make the pastry crisp. The texture of this pastry just absorbed the oil. Additionally, phyllo pastry recipes I’ve seen use butter as the fat, not shortening. Another misstep.
The combo of the overworking, bad texture and wrong fat for the style of cooking came together to create a texture that is much more akin to cardboard than it is to food. This is on top of the flavour problems mentioned in the first subheading on the pastry.
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned that the entire thing was undercooked? Yep, that’s right. Remember that gross mouthfeel that I mentioned earlier? I’m pretty sure that was the result of the flour being undercooked. Not that it’s difficult to see it was undercooked by the almost complete lack of any goldenness. Basically, every single thing that could have been wrong with this product was wrong. Top to bottom.
The Warm Taste Test
So, after the type of detours that you can only understand if you are 420 friendly, we did eventually taste the warmed up version. It wasn’t good.
In fact, I had an honest to goodness Gordon Ramsey moment. I spit the bite out in the garbage. All of those episodes of Kitchen Nightmares I’ve watched. All the times Ramsey refused to swallow something he put in his mouth. Now I get it. I understand. There was no way that bite was going into my stomach. Nope. Uh uh. No, Sir.
Shame on No Frills and Del’s Pastry
Listen, my parent’s shopped at No Frills from the time I was a child and the Zhers was turned into one of their franchises. Del’s Pastry was a staple in the house as my dad is a huge dessert lover. They used to be delicious. Not at mom and pop bakery level but something you were happy to have with coffee in the morning or as a dessert. Shame on you, Del’s Pastry for trying to pedal this crap as food. And No Frills. Shame on you for not holding your suppliers to a higher standard.
A Solution
Listen, I’m not one to indulge in picking apart a problem or product without offering a solution. So, talking to you now, No Frills. I challenge you to compile a list of companies that might be able to supply this product for you. Have them send me samples and I’ll critique them the same way I did here. Let me help you pick something that is delicious.
And Del’s Pastry, look at this as an opportunity to get your crap together. Improve your recipe and throw your hat in the ring. Get back to being delicious like you used to be. Because, honestly, you have no business calling what I tasted food. None whatsoever.
I’ll be sending a link to this article both to No Frills and Del’s Pastry along with my complaint about the product. Keep an eye out for the email I send as well as any responses on my Twitter account.
