Cinnamon Kitchen 4 course feast

 After Rick Stein last week, we have moved on to Vivek Singh's Cinnamon Kitchen. Their 4-course feast at home is £120, but we thought we would indulge.  The package duly arrives in the morning of the agreed day, and we begin unpacking. One of the sauces has spilled a little in transit but it's not a big deal. Items for each course are labelled with a coloured sticker. There are also cooking instructions for each. 

The first course is Bhel papdi chaat. There are three packs for this - some spiced potatoes, a pack of little popadums and other bits, and another pack of shredded things. The instructions say mix the cracked wheat, spiced potatoes and puffed wheat, so we mix the three together, with tamarind sauce and coriander chutney. It then says to sprinkle with chickpea vermicelli, which we don't have - or more likely have mistakenly already mixed in. Anyway we end up with an amorphous mixed bowl of stuff rather than the layered version in the picture. It's a huge portion, so we just have half. It tastes just fine, but not as good as the version you'd get in the restaurant, no doubt due to our error.

We decide that the portions are too large for one sitting, and think it better to leave the shrimp second course until tomorrow, moving straight on to the lamb shank roganjosh.  The lamb has to be boiled in its bag for 25 minutes, and biryani rice for 15.  There is also simmered lentils (black dhal). The instructions call for the lamb to be fried for 1-2 minutes at the end, but we skip this step.  There's a ginger and onion garnish, and an evil-looking pink raita chilli and garlic. 

It is very tasty indeed, rich oozing, spicy, with a lot of other subtle flavours going on too. The meat falls off the bone easily, and again we leave half for another day. 

The next day we eat the other half of the bhel, and then cook the Madras shrimp pepper fry.  This needs frying for 2 to 3 minutes and then its sauce added (described as a "crust" but it doesn't come up crusty for us).   There is a garnish of fried curry leaves and a vivid yellow curried yoghurt pot. This is also a very tasty and spicy dish, a slightly more modest size, so we manage to eat all of it. 

Then we turn to the dessert - ginger and garam masala toffee pudding. Again, the dish is warmed through in boiling water, before covering the pudding with the toffee sauce and nutmeg custard. It's very sweet, though the spices do shine through, the nutmeg especially.

So our £120 has paid for two full meals each, and we still have some lamb left. It would easily be enough for four people, probably better as you'd get all the different courses.

So: top marks for flavour; over the top portions; some complications in the cooking instructions; not as much washing up as Rick.  

Sea bass menu from Rick Stein

After the success of our French Table meals, we've decided to try out more of the restaurant delivery options. Rick Stein deliver anywhere in the country for around £8, and their three-course menus are a reasonable £50 - £60, so rather cheaper than TFT - the sea bass option was just £50.

The impressively packaged box duly arrived, and was unpacked with some ceremony. A couple of the sauces weren't labelled, so we had to work out which they were. It then dawned that this was more a load of ingredients and cooking instructions, rather than fully formed dishes just needing to be warmed up. The array of pans required was considerable too.

Anyway, B knuckled down and set to work. The first course was mussels with black beans, garlic and ginger.  We had the inevitable debate about what to do about open or closed mussel shells. On the mussel bag it said to "tap" the mussels to close them before cooking, but not to eat ones that didn't open afterwards - Rick's instructions said that didn't matter, and you could just prise them open. The sauce had to be fried briefly first, then the mussels and stock added and cooked for 3 minutes. Finally coriander and spring onion was added.  Luckily all the mussels opened so we didn't have to worry.  There was a whole kilo of mussels, so this made a substantial first course. The mussels were very sweet and tasty, and the sauce was interesting too. There wasn't as much stock as I might have expected, but mopping it with bread was very nice.

We took a little break before the main course. Again this was a good size portion - four large fillets of sea bass between us; two huge bok choy. That needed to be cooked first, while rice was cooked in the microwave.  It needed a very large frying pan to cook the fish, which was supposed to have a crispy skin - that proved difficult to achieve.  To accompany the fish there was a pre-prepared hot, sour and sweet sauce which just needed warming and pouring over, and a sprinkling of crisp shallots and cashew nuts. 

It was all very good indeed. The fish firm and full of flavour, with interesting toppings. Bok choy I can take or leave, but made the dish looked interesting. It was also very filling, so we decided to leave the dessert for another day. 

The dessert was pots of white chocolate topped with mango puree, and accompanied by cardamon shortbread. No cooking involved here. This was good, not as sickly sweet as it might sound. 

B told me to emphasise the amount of washing up that had to be done aftewards!  Overall it was a very good meal, though most of it you could do just by buying the ingredients and following a recipe. The pre-prepared sauces were something that would be harder to replicate, and you'd probably not bother with the fiddly shallots and nuts, which would be a shame as they did add texture.