It shouldn’t be Surprising if a Polllo Lababdar knows delicious. The dish is among my favorite salvations from northern India, a a little more nervous cousin of butter chicken that is a bit more spicy and so tangier, but just as creamy.
The surprising thing was that this particular chicken had arrived by mail. Specifically, it came on a microwave tray of the Cookune meal delivery service that looked a bit like a white label television dinner, packed that morning in Seattle, then driven to me in Portland, Oregon.
The world of prepared meals delivery is erupted in popularity lately, and almost all the main food kits services are entering the game. However, I have learned to temper my expectations when trying meals ready to eat. It is not easy to make pre-assembled foods know well, even if they were good when they started. The problem is moisture. And the problem is the microwave. In many cases, the results have been low.
Photography: Matthew Korfhage
But until now, Cookune seems to be a great exception. Cookunity is a somewhat new model of prepared meal delivery service, something like a cross between a meal service and Dordash. Instead of making recipes in a corporate cuisine from top to bottom, Cookune is regional. The service recruits local and national chefs, and promises to bring meals with restaurant quality to the house, prepared according to occasionally large name recipes. (Hi, José Garces.)
My chicken lababdar in particular was a lovely success. Basmati rice stained saffron maintained its moisture. My pieces of thigh were plumbing and still juicy. The sauce was slightly spicy, a little burning, with most of its sweetness from the natural tomato and puree sugars. Frankly, I knew much better than the chicken dishes that I could get from the Punjabi restaurant (certainly not great) on my house. And yet, the preparation was just a matter of putting my tray in the toasist oven for 12 minutes, or in the microwave for three.
Not all cookune dishes were as good as the Lababdar of the Seattle Gaurav Raj chef. More about that later. But in his ambition, his whole of culinary talent and his diversity of dishes, Ahaitio! Indonesian! Philippine! —Cookunity is the best food delivery service ready to eat that I have still tried or tested.
Here is the summary and the important warnings.
How cookunity works
Courtesy of cookune
First, bad news: Cookunity is not available everywhere. The meal service is left without eight regional commissioners in the United States and Canada: Seattle, La, Austin, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Miami and Toronto. This Leave Occidental Virginia, and a good strip of the states of the plains.
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