In The Kitchen - Meal in a Box

A major retailer here in South Africa recently introduced the concept of packing a complete meal ingredients in a box along with the recipe preparation. So of course this intrepid chef had to try it out.

The million dollar question was of course.... Will this be a once off? Or a regular occurrence?

Armed and ready for battle!! Not difficult to see that Floyd was my cooking role model

Opening the box ones first impression is "HUH? Is this all I get for my money?" Once I unpacked the box I felt a bit more comfortable and could actually feel the meal taking shape.

Hint Number 1: The description of the contents in the first pic is the desired state of the vegetables before commencing with the cooking, as the recipe itself does not specify peel, chop, slice etc.

So I jumped into action and did my maison plus and we were ready to rock and roll. Due to the family nature of this blog, I removed the rapidly diminishing bottle of wine well out of camera shot {hic}

Oh yes, we need the recipe for all you good folk who will have to go out and buy the ingredients and have annoying little left overs, in-balance of quantities and so on.
Advantage 1: Exact quantities with no waste or left over ingredients

So follow the recipe by picture and then read my executive summary after the dished up meal. I have some suggestions and things I would do differently next time (if there is a next time)

Steps 1 and 2

Step 3

Steps 4 and 5

While those are going I continued with steps 7 and 8 , preparing the Naan bread...

The completed meal ...VOILA !!

I will say it right up front.... the food was delicious and plentiful. Touted to be for two people, we fed three and I still had left overs for the office. That said, I found it a little bit sweet due to the quantity of sweet potato and a little bit runny but that is due to my not wanting the sweet potato mushy so did not reduce sufficiently.

So for next time I would use slightly less sweet potato, supplement the dhal by around 50% and reduce water to 500 ml's instead of the 600ml. Finally, I would sprinkle some mother-in-law masala and mix in 10 minutes before serving.

Do not get me wrong. This was one perfectly edible, delicious meal just as it was and best of all full value for the money.

Preparation time was around 45 minutes as the vegetables had to be prepared (peeled, chopped and grated) and quite a few sips happen between lips and glass .... so more than possible for a week night meal.

Conclusion: This will be a weekly affair and in fact tonight I will be preparing the Butternut, Haloumi and Beetroot Salad with Dukkah. Keep an eye out for my next post for feedback

As always, thank you for reading and your support.

Namaste!!