Upon hearing about NeighbourFood launching a new Gousto-style meal kit using ingredients from Fife food and drink producers I wanted to try it out myself and find out if I could really showcase the amazing produce right on my doorstep.
After getting my hands on one of the boxes, I was very eager to try it as I love Gousto, I love Fife’s produce and I love cooking, so it seemed like the perfect combination.
The box comes with everything you could possibly need, including some parchment paper. There is beef from the Falkland Estate, cheese from John Muir Country Store, vegetables from Organic Welltree, herbs and spices from Sri Spice, flatbreads from Simply Flo, and chillies from Foragers Chillies and Herbs.
This first dish of slow cooked Mexican beef wraps has been created in association with Stella Colleluori from nearby Hatters Catering. It is available to order through the NeighbourFood Falkland market until midnight tonight and for collection from Falkland Estate on Thursday.
Slow cooked
Fast forward to the weekend and I was standing at my hob at 6pm having not read the instructions beforehand to see that it took one hour of preparation time and two hours of cooking.
That’s no fault of NeighbourFood Falkland’s – the words “slow cooked” are in the name of the dish and it’s clearly stated on the front of the card.
One thing I would recommend is reading the instructions from start to finish before you plan to start cooking. It may seem obvious but had I done this, and not been so eager to eat, I would have been able to marinate the meat in the provided spice mix overnight, rather than for the two minutes I did this for.
It’s also recommended that the beef is fully defrosted before cooking with, though I wasn’t sure whether the marinating comes before or after that.
What I liked
What I liked about the concept was the same thing I like about other meal kit boxes – the instructions are relatively easy to follow and the recipe card means you can collect a few and make them again.
However, not all the measurements are stated on the card, such as how much of the spice mix is needed, the weight of the pickled chillies (and how to pickle them), as well as the amount of each ingredient you need for the toppings, though for this kind of dish it’s probably down to everyone’s own personal tastes.
For example, my partner and I weren’t that keen on the radishes, and also unsure on how you’re meant to cook chop them having never really used them before, so we left those aside.
Easy instructions
Apart from that, the instructions were relatively easy to follow, despite one point where it said to set the beef aside once it had been browned, and nowhere did it state to add the beef back in.
I put this down to the fact it was the NeighbourFood Falkland’s first go at this, and I think it was pretty easy to tell where I should add it – just before the dish went in the oven.
The fact the dish is slow cooked was ideal, despite my late start on it, because it means the flavours would be much more succulent and enhanced, which is worth any wait.
And, in fact, we were grateful we had held out the full three hours as the dish was so tasty and filling and not at all as spicy as I imagined it would be.
For people who aren’t confident in cooking, apart from the one missing stage above, it’s a pretty easy dish to follow and produces great results – a deliciously slow cooked meal that is so good for you and is also supporting local producers. There’s nothing not to love about that.
NeighbourFood Falkland is open every Friday to Tuesday, with order collections from Falkland Estate taking place every Thursday from 4pm-6pm. For more information, visit the website here.