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Wednesday 16 December 2015

#ewew cooks Roasted Honey Soy Chicken by Urban Stove

With an acceptable Meal 1 and the disastrous Meal 2 already done and dusted, I've come to my last and final Meal 3 of my second dinner box by Urban Stove.

I've become somewhat weary of what awaits me in Meal 3 which is the Roasted Honey Soy Chicken with Pumpkin Salad & Jasmine Rice.

The Ingredients:

Marinated chicken, bean curd  skin, pumpkin, Japanese cucumber, crushed peanuts, sesame seeds, salad dressing and jasmine rice.

The Recipe:

Simply follow the instructions on the recipe card.

 The Prep Needed:
 
Julienne the pumpkin (you need some mad chopping skills for this as the pumpkin is really hard) and cucumber into thin strips and cut the bean curd into cubes.

The Cooking:
 
 
Place the marinated chicken on a tray and roast in a preheated oven for 30 minutes (the recipe didn't say what temperature to roast the chicken at but, based on my cooking experience, I know it should be between 180 - 200C).

Fry the bean curd squares in some hot oil until they crisp up and place them into a bowl with the julienned pumpkin and cucumber.

Dress the salad with the pre-prepared salad dressing and add the crushed peanuts into the mix.

Remove the cooked chicken from the oven and finish it with a sprinkle of sesame seeds.

Place the salad onto a serving plate and top with the roasted chicken pieces.  [#Note: Although the recipe called for jasmine rice to be made, I omitted it coz I felt that the dish of roasted chicken (without any sauce) and a western-style salad just don't go with rice.]

So, here's my plated Roasted Honey Soy Chicken with Pumpkin Salad (minus the jasmine rice).  This is supposedly a portion for one with just two miserable pieces of chicken (from the chicken drumstick, it wasn't even one whole chicken leg)...I think they could have given a bit more.

And because I left out the carb (the jasmine rice) for this dish, the portion for one wouldn't be quite enough and I ended up eating both portions of chicken with the salad as my main meal...which obviously made this dish rather pricey at RM38 (or RM28 in my case).

Conclusion:

The Positives:
There's nothing to fault as far as taste is concerned as the roasted chicken, with its honey soy coating, was tasty and the crispy bean curd squares and salad provided the crunch (although the raw pumpkin strips were too hard to eat, maybe it could have been julienned more finely, I suppose).

The Negatives:
1)  Pairing the dish with jasmine rice wasn't the best combination
2)  Portion of chicken could be more than just two pieces per person
3)  Raw pumpkin is a bit hard for a salad
4)  Pricey for a dish that ended up good enough for one only

Final Comments:
Overall, this second dinner box turned out to be a disappointment compared to the first one.  However, I still think the concept is a good one but they just need to come up with the right (ie. failproof) recipes, the right (ie. better) portion sizes and the right (ie. lower) price.  I personally feel that the way they pack their meals is costing them too much and eating into the cost/price of the meal and they need to find a way to reduce the packaging costs in order to improve on the portion sizes.  On that note, you'd be glad to know that the price for 3 meals for 2 has been revised downwards to RM98 instead of RM115 (making the price per meal at RM16 instead of RM19)...which is a move in the right direction, in my opinion.  Now, they just need to get the right recipes and the recipes right! ;)
 

12 comments:

  1. That's why they tell you to pair with rice, with rice then maybe the chicken portion will be enough. The two dishes ended up being one because you are not listening to them hahaha! Maybe it will work with rice, who knows we have been served rice with salad and chicken chop in OldTown also what (okay, bad comparison)..

    Hmm.. I noticed one thing, seems like every time you cook these dishes, you are not following their recipe to the dot. Maybe that's not a very good way to write a review on them. Since you changed things up, if it is good they cannot take all the credit, if it is bad they should not shoulder all the blame.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had no choice...1) some of the recipes were not on point and 2) we all have things we like and things we don't, so I need to change it up just a bit.

      I still think that 2 pcs of chicken for a RM19 meal is a bit "kedekut". Even at chap farn stalls, we'd take more than 2 pcs of chicken (ok-lah, these ones are a bit bigger) + probably another 2 dishes to go with our rice! :(

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  2. I can see that the portion size is small for two persons, even with the rice. At least this time, the food was good albeit the hard pumpkin. I wouldn't fancy eating pumpkin raw.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We all know that western-style salads are usually crunchy (that's how they like them)...that's why there's raw pumpkin. Maybe if was julienned more finely, it'd be okay.

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  3. ooo, useful tips for the folks at urban stove ... if you do a third dinner box, hopefully the experience will be a positive one! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not sure if I'll ever do a third dinner box! :'( Unless they've got some dishes I really like...coz with the limited choice of five (+ I'm rather choosy), I find it very difficult to get three that I like.

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  4. I have eaten many types of vegetables raw but pumpkin is not one of them and I don't think I want to try because I love the taste of cooked pumpkin. Not too sure what raw pumpkin would taste like and most likely will break my weak teeth. Seems like they want to punish the cook by asking them to julienne the raw pumpkin - ouch!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sure it wasn't their intention at all, they probably didn't realise that (for novice cooks) it'd be so difficult to julienne (the extremely hard) raw pumpkin finely.

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    2. I like even for experienced cook, one will need super strength to julienne raw pumpkin. My mother always say it is so difficult to even cut into a raw pumpkin because they are so hard.

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    3. Luckily, I was given only a small wedge of the pumpkin. That's precisely why I never cook pumpkin, I just don't know how people manage to even peel the hard pumpkin! >.<

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  5. This look good :) I'm surprise to see fu chuk in this dish!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, it's kind of peculiar to find fu chuk in a western-style salad >_<

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