HOME COOKING

How to find inspiration when cooking for a family? Absolutely tries out the Mindful Chef recipe box

Words PENDLE HARTE

Cooking for a family is a chore. Ask anyone who puts a meal on the table every evening and they’ll agree.

In my house, the teenagers start asking about dinner as soon as they get home from school. At that point, I have learnt, it’s best to say you don’t know what’s for dinner yet. It’s best not to tell them at all, to eliminate any negotiation. If you tell them it’s lentils, they will probably be disappointed and complain – and if there are several hours until supper then that’s a long time to listen to complaining. However, feigning ignorance until the lentils are on the table mostly results in empty plates and only a bit of complaining. Essentially, they are disappointed with most things that aren’t pasta, and this I have just learnt to live with.

So, we have a repertoire of meals that are mostly based on compromise, and everyone is quite bored of them. We needed a bit of new inspiration. Mindful Chef offers recipe boxes that provide variety and low-carb, low-sugar meals, along with convenience and ease. It’s a simple system: sign up and choose four options from a selection of 20 that change every week. If you subscribe, it’s flexible: you can skip a week or cancel easily. Meals work out at about £6 per portion when ordering for a family of four and for this you are looking a generous portion of high quality protein with plenty of vegetables (really, much more than we would usually serve) and a complete lack of refined carbohydrates. Literally everything is included, down to small sachets of soy and single stock cubes. Our week kicked off with tamari salmon with pak choi and sweet potato mash, which was excellent and came with idiot-proof instructions. In fact, the teenagers could have made it themselves (they didn’t). For four of us there was a large packet of tenderstem broccoli and four pak choi, which amounted to double the amount of greens I would usually deliver. Sweet potato mash contained no oil or butter, and instead was flavoured with lime zest (not popular with the teenagers). The next day brought lentil dal with roasted vegetables (“what’s for dinner?” mindfulchef.com

“don’t know yet”) which was good – red lentils, coconut milk, coriander and a ready portion of ginger and garlic paste for ease. A sachet of ‘Mindful Chef dal spice blend’ felt a smidge infantilising – next time would you tell us what spices we are using please?

Roast vegetables in place of rice made this into a low-carb, healthy dinner. Flat iron steak with roasties and carrot mash was a crowd-pleaser (roast potatoes midweek!) and everyone loved the pea shoot garnish. Least popular was teriyaki mushroom bake, which I tried to bill as a vegan shepherds pie. Still, we’ve acquired some new recipes for the repertoire (all the week’s recipes are included in the booklet) and enjoyed a run of conversation-starting meals. We’ll certainly do it again.