Disclaimer: ChefX provided a one-time promotion box of food to Apartment613 at no cost. The opinions outlined here are those of the author.
For people who love to eat out, cooking gourmet at home can seem a bit daunting. Fancy ingredients, classic techniques – it’s a bit more involved than throwing a burger on the barbeque.
But apparently, cooking gourmet doesn’t have to be that hard. In fact, the folks over at ChefX are convinced you can do it in the comfort of your own home, with just the tools you have on hand. They’re so convinced in your ability to cook gourmet that they’re willing to pull together the food and the instructions to carefully walk you through it, to the delicious results awaiting you at the end.
ChefX is kind of your own personal sous-chef: getting your groceries, proportioning ingredients out, and doing basic prep so you can focus on the culinary task at hand. A subscription-based service, a box of goodies is delivered every Sunday with enough ingredients to make two meals for 2, 4 or 6 people.
So: what’s it actually like? Curious to find out, when ChefX approached Apt613 with an offer to try a box out, saying yes was a no-brainer. Being more of a baker with a tendency to leave gourmet cooking to the pros, I was a little hesitant to see what would be inside the boxes found on my front porch Sunday afternoon.
Opening the boxes up was like Christmas morning: presents that revealed arugula! bacon! summer peas! asparagus! and many more local, fresh ingredients to make okonomiyaki, a Japanese street food that, at its delicious core, is a cabbage, bacon and shrimp pancake – plus a side arugula salad. Tiny containers of what I assumed were sauce-y ingredients rounded out the box, along with a detailed ingredient list and step-by-step instructions detailing how I’d spend my next hour.
In reality, it took about 1.5 hours for it all to come together – I blame my sub-par knife skills that just can’t compete with a chef quickly and thinly slicing a 1/4 head of cabbage. Step 1 was by far the most labour intensive: chopping, grating, peeling, deveining, dicing and mincing. This first bit was little lacking in detail: when it came to “Peel and devein shrimp”, my sub-par skills became evident as I Googled how to devein, just in case I had it wrong.
With the complicated deveining completed, the rest of the tasks were simple to do and the smell of bacon lardons frying didn’t hurt. Boiling water? Check. Mixing up salad dressing? Check. Frying – and flipping – a giant cabbage, pork and shrimp pancake? Check and check.
I managed to get it pretty close to their “this is what it should look like” picture, although the nori garnish was a little unwieldy. As for the taste? It was delicious. The wasabi mayo was a great touch, and I’d definitely make the salad dressing again. There was a lot of cabbage left over, leading to an improvised version of the okonomiyaki made the next day and a make-your-own sauerkraut experiment. There was also a bit of waste – the small sauce containers added up in the trash bin.
So, does a subscription make sense? It’s $59 per week for two meals per week for two people, scaling up at a reduced rate. So if you’re a self-made foodie who eats out a few times a week and wants to supplement this with improving your cooking skills, ChefX is right up your alley. I, for one, will be making okonomiyaki again.
For past recipes, featured chefs and subscription information, check out the ChefX website. Sign up by Monday at midnight to receive your first delivery the following Sunday.
.gif)
