M Kitchen On Tour

Last week I was invited to go along to M Kitchen’s Cookery Bus which was in Birmingham for a couple of days.  M Kitchen, Morrisons range of convenience foods, has had a revamp and they were out on the road to bring their new dishes to a new audience.

Over recent months Neil Nugent, Morrisons executive chef of product development, and his team have been working to create new dishes for the M Kitchen range. The M Kitchen range was launched two years ago and includes over 450 product lines.

The new dishes the M Kitchen was serving up for the good folk of Birmingham to try came from these ranges:

• Tex Mex
• Italian
• Tastes of Home – British classics
• Takeaway – Chinese and Indian

While I was there I tried out the Chicken Korma from the Takeaway range and the Lamb Ragu with Tagliatelle from the Italian range.

The Chicken Korma was a really stand out dish. I loved the fact that you could clearly pick out what some of the star ingredients were like the rose petals and the slivers of fresh coconut. It was created for Morrisons by Atul Kochhar.  Atul Kochhar has a collection of Indian restaurants including Benares in Mayfair which has a Michelin star.  Atul Kochhar’s dishes can be summed up as modern Indian cuisine with a contemporary British twist.  The Chicken Korma lived up to this.  It was a good-looking, attractive dish with a creamy, flavoursome sauce.  If you’re a korma fan it’s well worth trying this one.

I also tried out M Kitchen’s Lamb Ragu with Tagliatelle.  This was a tasty ragu sauce with a depth of flavour.  The tomato and red wine sauce pulls the dish together and coats the tagliatelle well.  I enjoyed this dish, but it didn’t grab me in quite the same was as the chicken korma.

Whilst I was there I met Richard, one of the M Kitchen’s chefs.  His enthusiasm for his job (developing new dishes for the range) and the concepts behind the range shone through.  He talked about how the dishes are made in small batches rather than enormous vats to maintain that home cooked taste.

Richard also gave a cookery demonstration with some useful tips, like how to cut up onions and other vegetables.  I learnt a little about Italian cookery principles too.  He made a ragu like the one we tried.

I got to take some dishes home with us and my husband tried out the Slow Cooked Beef with Gravy which came with a generous portion of gravy.  I got to sample the Spicy Enchiladas which were very tasty indeed.  Like all ready meals they tend to have fairly small portion sizes, but when they taste good and cost less than a takeaway, you can mix and match from the range to find an easy meal to suit.  I think the range is perfect for that Friday night feeling a bit lazy and wanting an end of week treat sort of mood.

It’s not too late to catch the M Kitchen roadshow in Glasgow at St.Enoch’s Square on 25th and 26th October.