I have been a vegetarian now for most of my life, well at least since I was released from the orphanage after the war when I would wander the streets with my ever loyal pet piglet, and although I am not a keen enthusiast when it comes to ready meals, preferring instead to prepare my own in my gypsy caravan on the hill, I am willing to try one or two from time to time. I am usually less reluctant though, to try Tesco ready meals. This is not just because there are now no stores near where I live but because I was deeply disturbed one time after seeing a documentary highlighting their unsavoury food processing methods. However, I do now and again decide to risk it and once upon a time I gave Tesco Meat Free Cauliflower Cheese Grills a try.

You'll find these grills in the frozen foods section (well you used to as I can't find them anymore). The grills come in a cardboard packaging and contain four rounded grills, weighing 397g. They cost about £1.70 a box. Quite expensive when you think about it. The only thing that I find annoying about the packaging is the name of the product: why 'Meat Free'? surely 'Vegetarian' will suffice!

The grills contain chucks of cauliflower, slices of green peppers, potato, onion and vegetarian cheddar cheese and these ingredients are encased in a medium layer of crispy breadcrumbs. Apart from the main filling the ingredients also include vegetable oil, spices, salt, wheat and milk. It's the cheese that gives them most of their flavour although the peppers do add a touch of excitement I suppose. I wouldn't say they're a great tasting dish, but they'll do if you're in a rush and you certainly don't get that cauliflower smell that fills the house (or caravan) whenever you cook a real cauliflower.

They grills take about 25 minutes at 200 degrees centigrade to cook, maybe slightly less in a fan based oven and you can cook then straight from the freezer. You can also grill them for 15 minutes but cooking cauliflower based foods in this way is never the easiest task to get right as if you leave them in too long the breadcrumbs will start to burn and if you undercook them slightly the cauliflower chunks will remain hard. I'd like to say practise makes perfect, but it usually doesn't in this case.

For the obsessed: each 92g cauliflower cheese grill contains 205 calories, 6g of protein, 20g of carbohydrate (2g sugars), and 11g of fat (2g saturates). You also be consuming 3.7g of fibre and 0.7g of salt per grill. So quite a fatty mix on account of the cheese content.

Tesco Cheesy Cauliflower Grills are not the worst ready meal I've ever had and not as bad as I'd imagined from Tesco (I had some of their tinned curried mackerel the other week (I couldn't catch any fish in my pond) which was absolutely grotesque, tasted like a sweet pudding with slimy fish in it). Certainly if you're a vegetarian on the go, or if you're just a lazy sod, then you should find them a useful addition to the freezer. The grills are tasty enough without being amazing (Nigella wouldn't touch them with a barge pole so she tells me) and are nice served with vegetables, salad or the ever reliable tin of baked beans.