20/05/2013
Secret Ingredient
(online store)
https://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/deliciously-guilty-secret-unveiled-e2297648
Thanks to Secret Ingredient for letting me try their delicious meals.
Now with Secret Ingredient everyone can be a master chef if they keep their secret while Secret Ingredient does the hard work and thinking!
Basically at Secret Ingredient they offer so many delicious and healthy dishes that are made simple for you to cook.
All the ingredients are marinated, washed, cut for your convenience.
Each ingredient is labelled with an alphabet and the recipe is as simple as ABC, you just look for the required letters and put those ingredients in.
The instruction sheet is crystal clear and tells you what cooking utensils are needed.
After browsing their website, I was really impressed because the dishes they offered were dishes that you would expect to order in restaurants, but now they can be easily cooked in everyone's homes and you can pretend to be master chef without anyone knowing the secret behind.
I loved the Western dishes they offered.
Examples of the dishes they offer:
-Crunchy Tilapia with Fennel Tzatsiki and Mediterranean Couscous
-SI’s Tuna Tacos with Fresh Guacamole and Signature Chilli-Parm Corn
The orders are ready on the same day if you order before 5pm and can be delivered to your home or office.
I was amazed by their hospitality because I really wanted to try the salad, desserts, soup, and vanilla soda too and they were able to accommode that.
After I made the order, their menu was changed the next day and they informed me that I could take a look at the new menu too and change my order if I found something else even better.
Anyway, I was such a greedy pig and tried:
Greek Salad
Pumpkin Pie
Pecan Pie
Celeriac Soup
Vanilla Dry Soda
Veggie Thai Curry
I was really looking forward to cooking again because the environment and climate in Hong Kong is too hot and the accommodation here is so cramped compared to the "normal conditions" in the UK which I took for granted.
Luckily it was not that hot the day I cooked and just as I thought everything was going according as planned I was furious to find out that the cooker was out of gas.
In the end I resorted to using a rice cooker to cook and surprisingly it turned out fine.
My food was delivered in a lovely brown paper bag.
The items were packed in perfect equilibrium with the sauces at the bottom giving the bag a sturdy base and platform for the other ingredients on top.
Some of the vegetables were vacuum packed which kept the vegetables fresh and other ingredients were packed neatly in clear tubs and lettered.
I am sure it was just as fun for them packing my order as it as for me unpacking it!
All the packaging they use is environmentally friendly, corn based and not plastic.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Greek Salad:
The greek salad was an easy starter, it was just finding the required letters and mixing them together.
There were delicious yellow peppers, feta cheese, olives, cucumber, parsley and purple onions and dressing.
The salad was colourful and sweetly delicious because of the yellow peppers and the feta and olives paired perfectly with the onions giving a crunchy Greek salad medley.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Veggie Thai Curry:
Unfortunately, I had to use a rice cooker for this because I ran out of gas, but it still worked.
I only failed with the noodles because I left them for too long so they were a bit soft, but cooking the Thai curry sauce was easy as 1-2-3 and the curry pastes and ingredients supplied smelt so gorgeous with plenty of lemongrass leaves which is an essential for Thai green curry.
The vegetables tasted amazing because the curry sauce that was developed by them was delicious and when the noodles were mixed in, it absorbed that delicious curry sauce.
It was slightly spicy with a delicious creamy coconut taste.
It was truly a hearty vegetarian meal with broccoli, baby sweetcorn, aubergines, potatoes and fresh peas.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Celeriac Soup:
The soup was in a vacuum sealed bag so all you had to do was boil it in water and pour the contents in a bowl.
The apple was the only ingredient I had to cut because it oxidises easily.
The taste of the soup was also amazing, it was creamy and full of celery flavour, the pieces of apple and the celery soup were delicious together and the pairing of celery and apple always works.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Pumpkin Pie:
I have been craving for this ever since Thanksgiving because Pumpkin pie is gorgeous, it tastes different from normal pumpkin because the pie version is mixed with cinnamon and other spices and the texture of the pumpkin pie filling was thick and creamy.
The sweetness was just right and the crust thin and crispy.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Pecan Pie:
The pecan pie was also delicious and I am sure anyone would like it, the sweetness was just right with lovely pecan nuts.
Both pies were delicious and I was so lucky that Secret Ingredient partnered with Tai Tai Pie Pie to launch their first dessert collection, otherwise I would not known about their delicious pie collection.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Vanilla Dry Soda:
This is the BEST soda I have tried in my life. If you know me, I rarely drink sodas because they taste artificial and I find them syrupy, but this bottle of dry soda was PURE soda.
What I mean by that is the taste was NATRUAL and it tastes like fizzy water with a hint of vanilla and no other artificial tastes.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
