Introducing Urban Stove: home cooked food, without the hassle - trial box

Urban Stove: Home cooked food, without the hassle.

I received the trial box from Urban Stove last week. What's Urban Stove? Urban Stove's mantra, "We deliver fresh ingredients and exciting recipes to your doorstep so you can make your own healthy meals at home."

In a nutshell, Urban Stove is about revolutionizing the way we cook and eat our dinners at home. They aim to do this by making it really convenient for us to cook healthy restaurant-grade meals in just 30 minutes by providing fresh pre-portioned ingredients right to our doorstep. We now can easily dish out a wide variety of tasty and complex cuisines - without having the hassle of planning, shopping and prepping. This is also a great way to reduce wastage and avoid cluttering our kitchen with excess ingredients.

The idea is that we will now have more time for things that really matter.

Am I sold by the idea? Of course I am! I give thumbs up and toes up, man! I need this service desperately! LOL!

The unboxing process

I was like a little girl opening up my Christmas pressies on Christmas morning. That pretty much summed up how I felt. :)

In the box

An introductory letter from the Urban Stove Team.

Pre-portioned, fresh, ingredients in 3 different parcels (because there are 3 recipes). The marinated chicken and fresh fish are packed separately. Each parcel is tagged with one color sticker.

Corresponding recipe cards / cooking instructions (with corresponding color coded stickers).

The parcels are placed neatly in an insulation bag and ice packs to keep them at a safe temperature. The manufacturer of the ice packs are HACCP certified. The contents are non-toxic and can be disposed in a safe manner.

Note: In summary, 3 parcels serve up 3 different meals with each meal serving 2 adults.

What do I need to do?

Refrigerate the ingredients immediately after unboxing.
Note: I will freeze fresh meat and fish if I'm not cooking them so soon.

Ingredients can be kept for 3-5 days in the fridge. However, the vegetables have been freshly cut, so it's best to consume them ASAP.

All I need to do now is to cook and enjoy! And I sure did!

Recipes

Note: I'm not publishing the full recipes here because they are Urban Stove's hard work. :)

Pan-fried Asian Seabass with Miso Sweet Mash and Passion Fruit Broth

This is a complex dish that will appeal to those with a flair for recipes that incorporate ingredients of "clashing" yet complementing tastes. In this case, miso with sweet potato and passion fruit pulp in broth with fish sauce.

Buttermilk Baked Chicken with Couscous

The chicken's marinade - made from buttermilk, scriracha sauce and Dijon mustard - gives this baked chicken dish a really nice tangy, subtle lingering taste. The couscous tastes good with the lemon butter that comes together in the recipe. However, hubby and I add Tabasco sauce to give some fiery kick to this dish.

Squid Ink Spaghetti with Summer Vegetables

This is a very simple dish, but I really love the colors of the mixed vegetables. The squid ink spaghetti gives this dish such a unique appearance. Adding crumbled feta cheese on top adds another kind of saltiness to this pasta dish. Perfect! Even my soon-to-be-23-months-old toddler chomps mouthfuls!

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If you like what you're reading now, don't forget to follow them closely on their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/urbanstove

Oh, and I just bought myself another set of box. It will be delivered next week, 14 July 2015! Woohoo!

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