If you've ever drooled over any of the recipes in my country-by-country globecooking recipe index, I have some fabulous news for you - Kitchen Trotter and their monthly culinary voyage of discovery subscription boxes have finally come to the UK.
I've been discovering their boxes in France for well over a year now (the perks of being a dual nationality family !) and have discovered ingredients and recipes to take me to all corners of the globe. The first UK box that I was sent to review was the Indonesian box.
The welcome card in the box introduces you to the menu and also gives you a link to a playlist of authentic music to give you a soundtrack to your special globecooking dinner. I must admit, I never do all of the dishes in one go as I prefer to spread them out over several days but there is always a starter (which I often cook as a main), a main course and a dessert, plus an extra recipe.
You get all the exotic ingredients required and a handy shopping list of all the other things you need to buy - meat, fish, rice, vegetables, etc - to make the dishes. The ingredients in the Indonesia box are :
Gado Gado mix, to make a peanut-based sauce
Combava leaves, that you crush up to release a citrus flavour
Shrimp Paste, which absolutely stinks to high heaven !
Kecap Manis, which is a gorgeous sweet thick soy sauce perfect for drizzling over stir fried veggies
Pandam aroma, which is bright green !
Lemongrass powder
Kemiri nuts (just make sure you cook them to avoid upset stomachs !)
and the gadget - an egg-timer.
The enclosed booklet describes all the ingredients and gives you lots of background information about this month's country.
The first dish in this box is Gado Gado, a potato salad with a sweet peanut sauce.
You can see my step by step recipe here. This was lovely and we made it into a main meal by increasing the amount of potatoes.
Mie Goreng, a stir-fried vegetable, chicken, egg and noodle dish that the whole family tucked into.
Here's our version - see how me made it here.
Ayam Areh, a chicken in coconut milk dish, which used the stinky shrimp paste too !
It actually tasted much nicer than it smelt ! See my step-by-step blogpost here.
And finally, for dessert, Kue Dader Gulung, which are bright green coconut pancakes !
I need to have another go at these because mine didn't come out quite right - I ran out of coconut milk so my filling was too dry, but they still tasted lovely. See my attempt here.
I love the fact that Kitchen Trotter gives you a simple way to sample exotic cuisine without having to go to all the effort of sourcing strange ingredients and then working out what to do with them.
To be kept up to date with the launch : www.kitchentrotter.co.uk
Disclosure : I received the box in order to write an honest review.
great idea
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