Staff testing January 2016

Written by Alice
Published on 10th February 2016 at 14:57 • No comments yet, be the first!

Robyn on Red Braised Pork Kit Lucky for me, this month I got to test out a brand new world kitchen recipe kit, 'Red Braised Pork'. Some may say I picked this knowing full well that it's a 10 min prep job, and a 1 1/2 hour leave to simmer whilst enjoying a soak in the bath kind of meal. I mean I'm not adverse to a bit of kitchen action, but these dark cold January nights are doing nothing to inspire me to spend my evenings in the kitchen. This is one of my all time favourite recipe kits that I've ever eaten at Spicery HQ (second only to Beef Rendang!). The pork belly is slow cooked in a Chinese stock flavoured with spices, sugar and soy sauce. Served with sesame rice, and Sichuan pickled cucumber. I must say from all the kits I've cooked this has to be the easiest one I've ever done. The trickiest part was making sure I didn't burn the sugar, oh and remembering to set the timer for the rice! I didn't even have to peel the ginger. Once the pork was simmering in the soy spiced sugary caramel sauce I had a whole hour and a half to relax. After a long soak and a helpful hand from my housemate who made sure my rice didn't burn, my dinner was ready. I was chuffed with the result. It actually tasted exactly like the one I had at spicery HQ. Massive success!

Matt on Date Night in Penang;

This month my 6 year old Ivy and I took on cooking Date Night in Penang for the whole family, 2 adults and 3 children, as Sunday lunch. We'd have to admit that we cooked some extra noodles to stretch it out, but it did work for us. We served the starter and main together as a spread, with the dessert served after, which worked perfectly as the children could pick out the bits that they liked the most - with the pineapple dessert a useful encouragement for the kids to experiment with new flavours! The 3 and 6 year olds' didn't need any encouragement with the chicken and coconut rice - they loved it. The vegetarian 8 year old loved the laksa as expected as she is into big spicy flavours, and she added additional fiery sambal as well as a few other the other accompaniments from the main. The children really enjoyed having all the bits and pieces to add themselves, and polished off the pineapple granita pretty quickly. We did actually put the granita through our little ice cream machine which was brilliant - the resulting sorbet had great texture and flavour, though we held back a few chilli flakes with the little ones in mind. Ivy really enjoyed helping out as there was all sorts going on, including various bits of blending and chopping as well as making sorbet!

Jess on Trinidad Doubles;

As a new found meat phobe, this was the golden ticket for me! I have to admit, my heart wasn’t totally in it, approaching 6 months pregnant and feeling a bit on the fatigued side of things most of the time, I involved a reluctant sous chef to do all the chopping as I acted as over-see-er! The chickpea curry was a breeze, as were the accompaniments … in fact, the meal as a whole was pretty easy. the only downside was that I hadn’t read through the recipe properly before cooking it, meaning that the onion in the salad was quite large and a little off putting! I also didn’t have any veg/sunflower oil so had to fry the bread in olive oil which made it a bit saturated and heavy! Pudding was an experience, not the rice pudding that I grew up with (closer to ready brek, texture wise). This is more of a savoury looking rice accompaniment, that happens to be sweeter than sweet! It was wonderful, we loved it and dolloped a pile of creme fraiche on top to combat the sweetness. It was quite a vat, following a hearty pile of chickpeas … but I am eating for two! All in all, it was quite chickpea heavy and a little bit on the basic side (dare I say??) but the tamarind chutney really pulled the whole thing together and a finished off the bara and chickpeas with a load of winter chutney spices the next day which was perfection!

Suze on New Mexico BBQ;

New Mexico was one of my favourite places that I visited in my summer of travel, so when this box ended up as a staff testing option I jumped at the chance!

The pork ribs were my favourite part, definitely. Marinaded in a lime, ancho and chipotle sauce then grilled and served with a sweet bbq chilli sauce - an absolute winner and I'd love to make that marinade again. The rest of it - well, anything in a tortilla is my favourite meal, so it was bound to be a winner. Lots of big flavours, and lots of food!

It was such an easy meal to cook - there was a little prepping ahead of time making the pork marinade, and the rest of it all came together quite quickly in about an hour. I was cooking for a vegetarian and there was plenty for her to eat too.

Admittedly, I didn't find this BBQ very similar to the New Mexican food I've had (which tended to involve pools of red or green chilli sauce on top of fried things), but it was really delicious

Chris on Date Night in Seoul;

I had an old version of the recipe which had flour missing off the ingredients and the allergens not underlined. Though after checking the version on the drive this had been sorted so disaster averted! I'm glad I had help cooking this one! We used nearly every pan and bowl in our kitchen and turned it into a bit of a bomb site, but it was fun to cook and nothing went wrong.

The starter was more impressive, taste and looks wise, than the main course. Though the Ssamjang sauce and the mushrooms were delicious! The dessert was nice and tangy, rounding off a tasty meal.

Whilst the cooking process was pretty hectic, it was on time, good fun and with a tasty result so definitely one I'd cook again.