I’ve had the pleasure of working with Riverford previously on two occasions. First to try out their regular recipe box, and then to sample what their guest chef duo, The Happy Pear, had to offer. It was with great excitement that I accepted the opportunity to try out the most recent guest recipe box, as it was featuring none other than Sarah Raven – a big name in this household, and many others I’m sure.

Sarah Raven is the author of my most treasured Christmas book: Sarah Raven’s Complete Christmas (yes, I have more than one Christmas book, if you don’t know me by now guys..). She’s also responsible for one of my Mum’s most favourite go-tos, Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook. Basically, we’re big fans, and I was psyched to try out some of her recipes.

The first recipe I tried was the one I most liked the look of, the tomato and poppy seed tart. This was a really interesting and original recipe. I was fascinated by the pastry – poppy seeds, in no small amount, were added before rubbing in and rolling out. I think this affected how easy it was to work with in quite a big way, but the end result was so successful in taste and texture that I think it’s worth doing. The pastry was blind baked and topped with a layer of sheep cheese, a layer of basil and finally some chopped and cooked down tomatoes. I took the finished tart to the office with me and everybody that tried some was a fan.

The Sangria Chicken, whilst delicious, was potentially not worth the graft. Marinating and making space in the fridge for a big roasting dish is kind of a ballache, and I feel like it didn’t absolutely need to be in the fridge overnight. However, I will absolutely be cooking fennel in orange and lemon juice again, because that was sensational.

There was a third recipe, unfortunately I had technical difficulties (lost the recipe card and someone else nabbed half the ingredients) so couldn’t give a verdict..

Overall I loved the recipes I tried out, and would definitely be interested in cooking more from the book they were taken from. As I’ve experienced before with Riverford, the recipes are slightly more hands on and potentially more time consuming or difficult than other boxes, but the quality of ingredients is top of the range and the taste doesn’t disappoint. Grab a Sarah Raven box now.

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