These new DIY cooking kits are ridiculously good! And we really hope they outlast the current crazy times we are living in. They are an affordable way to get expertly curated dishes at home, without having to do any of the hard work.
People have just got to try one out for themselves. And we can think of no better kit to start off with than that from Galvin la Chapelle, the Michelin-starred restaurant in Spitalfields. They’ve come out swinging, setting the standard for DIY kits in London. Every other restaurant better pay attention.
Each week, the chefs create a three-course ‘Galvin At Home’ meal for us folks to make ourselves. Well make is generous. They have done just about everything for you already, only leaving you with the fun plating up and heating up responsibilities.
Each of the dishes seems complicated and we were honestly overwhelmed when just reading the menu itself. We thought it was going to be tough – ashamed to show our mates our sorry excuse for a Michelin-starred meal. But all that anxiety is tossed aside as soon as you load up the Galvin Brothers’ video tutorials.
Not only do you get written instructions, you also get a short video of one of the chefs doing exactly what you need to do. They take you through each of the simple steps– briefly explaining what you need to do, and what they have already done for you. And it is just so easy. You can stop and pause it as you run about looking for pots and all the teaspoons in the house (used for plating all the delicious sauces they’ve made).
Once you’re ready for the next step, you just unpause the video and go again. We even took so much more care than usual when plating each dish and presenting it to our guest. So much pride.
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Plus, each video is no more than five minutes long. Putting the food together is worryingly easy. For a short while, we thought we were doing it all wrong. Missing some key step. Wondering if it was going to be all we had dreamed. We’ve dined in at Galvin La Chapelle before, so we had high expectations already.
And while it wasn’t exactly like the food you get when dining in (of course the dish being fully prepped by a trained chef is best), it was still spectacular food – looking and tasting better than most grub we do ourselves.
We kicked it off with a salad of heirloom tomatoes, super creamy burrata, Castelfranco leaves, candied walnuts, a sherry and olive oil vinaigrette, dried olives and an olive reduction.
The box came with all the sauces and crumbs separated out, just needing to be plated up. It took less than three minutes to make it looks as good as the salad in the video tutorial. And it tasted so much better than any of the salads we made during lockdown. The sweet candied walnuts and olive reduction was perfectly balanced with the fresh tomatoes, acidic dressing and creamy burrata. Winner!
Second was the main – a seared supreme of wild seabass served on a bed of crushed potatoes and paired with some sautéed fennel, broad beans and tomatoes. Each of these elements was soaked some herbaceous oil or cooked in a very particular way before we even received them. It is high quality restaurant food – so much more complex than it looks.
We then ended on dessert, after nibbling on the focaccia and olives that also came with the meal. Dessert consisted of white chocolate mousse and roast blood peach topped with lavender honey, biscuit crumbs and garnished with some micro herbs. Gotta love a good micro herb at home. This was absolute heaven, and we were mightily surprised by how good our own looked (again, even if the chef’s was sexier in the tutorial).
The entire experience of putting these spectacular dishes together was great fun. You can either make it a fun date night dinner, host some mates over and look like you’ve done so much more than you really have or just treat yourself to something special for no damn reason.
No matter what, we can’t recommend Galvin At Home enough. It’s a great experience and even better when you know your helping support a much-loved restaurant during these really tough times. This ‘paint by numbers’ dinner must be tried. Especially as they start nationwide deliveries from October.
galvinrestaurants.com/galvin-at-home
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