Family Dining in with Marks and Spencer’s Italian Range

It is no secret of mine that I love Marks and Spencer food.  For us, it is a real treat to shop at the food hall and we do this for special occasions or around Christmas time. So when Marks and Spencer got in touch for me to review their new Italian range that has recently launched, I knew this would be a real treat!

Marks and Spencer’s Italian range was launched last week and are offering their customers a range of new dishes to choose from – and some of them sound delicious.  Whilst offering dishes of simplicity (but still oh so flavoursome!) the range offers some exciting and new combinations to try.  With dishes such as chicken, pea and pancetta risotto, crab linguine and gorgonzola and walnut ravioli, I knew it would be a hard task to choose only a select few – I may just have had to buy the whole shop!

I love Italian food (in fact all cuisines!) and so do the kids.  I wanted dishes that would suit all our tastes so I took the kids with me to our local Marks and Spencer to pick our meals.  It was fun letting them chose what they wanted to try, and was quite empowering for them too – It’s easy to expect our kids to just eat what we put in front of them.  I think they quite enjoyed having some responsibility over this task (within reason of course!)

We chose:

• Tomato and Pesto Mascarpone Strozzapretti
• Scallop Pea and Pancetta Linguine
• Gorgonzola and Walnut Ravioli
• Chicken and Bacon Pasta Bake

To accompany our dishes, we chose the two breads on offer in the new Marks and Spencer’s Italian range.  These were:

• Cheese and Pesto Flatbread
• Piquillo and Cherrybell pepper Focaccia

We decided to cook our Mark and Spencer’s Italian food midweek after a busy afternoon of swimming lessons.  Sometimes as a busy parent, we need to just have something easy and simply to cook that doesn’t require hours of cooking and preparation.  Three of the meals we chose were best cooked in the microwave and only the ravioli was to be boiled.  We popped both breads in the oven for 10 minutes and whilst the ravioli boiled and the microwave warmed up the other dishes, we prepped our plates and were ready to eat!

Our verdict of the Marks and Spencer’s Italian Range

We served up and the kids were super excited for our mini buffet, giving us the opportunity to try al the dishes.  I think it is always nice to do something a little different at mealtimes every now and again.   We all helped ourselves and got stuck in.  All I needed now was a nice crisp glass of wine!

Firstly, all five of us loved the chicken and pasta bake.  This dish is full of a smokey flavour with chunks of chicken and plenty of crispy pancetta. This was B’s favourite and I loved the rich creamy sauce it was in.  The tomato and pesto Mascarpone Strozzapretti was another favourite for the kids (and for me!)  The tomato sauce was fragrant in flavour and had sweet semi dried tomatoes throughout.  I loved the addition of the pine nuts too.  Matt also enjoyed this too as he is a huge fan of sun-dried tomatoes!

Matt’s favourite dish was the walnut and gorgonzola ravioli.  We love cheese in our house but the acquired taste of the cheese was not to the kids liking.  Having said that, Matt and I thoroughly enjoyed it and found the taste of the gorgonzola to be subtle and sweet against the walnut.  Finally, the Scallop, pea and pancetta linguine was the final dish we tasted.  This dish was full of mini scallops that were sweet and complimented the spice of the dish.  Both Matt and I thought this dish was delicious.

The Marks and Spencer’s Italian breads were a compliment to our dishes.  I loved the spongy sweet flavour of the focaccia whilst the kids loved the pizza style garlic bread.

Final Say

We had a lovely family meal and overall, we really enjoyed the Mark’s and Spencer’s Italian range.  The range really offers plenty of choice to suit all tastes.  Whether you want to have a family meal with the kids or treat yourself to a date night in with your partner or friends, you won’t be left with hungry tummies.

Why not visit your local Mark’s and Spencer for a nose and let me know what you think below!

This is a collaborative post.  We were gifted the products shown in this review from the Mark’s and Spencer’s Italian Range.  All words and opinions are my own*