Gousto – Simply Cook – The Recipe Box – Review and Giveaway

If you now wonder what Gousto is, let me explain…

Gousto enables everyone to enjoy cooking delicious meals with ease. They give you quality ingredients and easy to follow recipe cards that let you cook with confidence. Giving you back the time you lose planning your meals and traipsing about finding all the ingredients will allow you to reclaim the joy of cooking.

In simple words, Gousto will provide you with everything you need to create healthy, tasty and quick family meals – just add salt and pepper and some oil if required.

For the last few weeks I’ve been cooking with Gousto. I tried their 2 and 4 people meal box and I totally loved them. The service is outstanding and the content of each box truly fantastic. Just as stated on the above picture you get organic vegetables, Red Tractor meat and everything else you might need in order to create the meal you picked from the menu. From the selection of six meals, the most ingredients I had to add from my own cupboard was: salt, pepper, 1tbs of sugar or olive oil – everything else was provided; everything including fresh herbs, spices and of course all your main ingredients. The portion sizes are good, they aren’t too big so as to leave you bloated but will for sure fill you up (at least for some time).

Every week Gousto offers 10 new healthy recipes to pick from. You make your choice and they take care of the rest. The ingredients and easy to follow recipe card will arrive at your door on the earlier agreed day… all you have to do now is cook.

According to a YouGov survey after polling 10,000 respondents they found that that one in 10 of us, equating to five million adults, balk at even boiling an egg. 52 per cent of Brits say they can confidently cook 10 or more dishes from scratch. 52 per cent! So what is happening to rest of us – microwave and frozen meals all the time?

A lot of people do not cook because they don’t know how to, they have no time to plan the meals, go shopping and then actually cook them… Gousto is helping with all these problems. You pick what you fancy to eat and they will deliver all that is needed to cook it. No time wasted planning and shopping and most important no food wastage as you get precisely the amount needed to cook your meal. And when it comes to cooking – the recipes aren’t rocket science, you will receive a step by step recipe card, including detailed instructions and pictures to help you. The longest recipe I received took 35 minutes to prepare, so they aren’t really time consuming either, perfect for those nights when you arrive home from work weary yet hungry.

If you are wondering what type of meals you can cook with Gousto check out two of my creations:

Honey Saffron Chicken with Mint & Orange Couscous

Mozzarella Panzanella Salad

And if these two didn’t convince you, visit This Week’s Recipe section on Gousto website 🙂

If you would like to try the Gousto service I have a three dishes for 2 persons meal box to give away. Just follow me on Twitter and RT:

Follow and RT @AgataPokutycka and @FollowGousto to win a fantastic #Gousto box full of yummy #food! Full T&C at: http://wp.me/p3l2gI-1lB

Follow and RT @AgataPokutycka and @FollowGousto to win a fantastic #Gousto box full of yummy #food! Full T&C at: http://t.co/1GHmHEbLA2

— Agata @ BarkTime (@AgataPokutycka) November 4, 2014

And if you don’t want to wait until the competition has finished and would like to try it for yourself now, you can use my £25 off promo code MARK18202. This code will give you £25 off your first order.

T&C:
1. Open to UK readers only.
2. One obligatory entry per reader – follow me and RT as stated above. Extra RT will count as additional entries.
3. There will be 1 winner in total.
4. The winner will receive 1 x 3 meal 2 people Gousto box. The prize will be provided by Gousto.
5. Winner will be picked at random and informed within 7 working days via Twitter.
6. Winner will have 7 working days to claim the prize, after this time, a new winner will be selected.
7. Closing date is Tuesday 11-11-2014 at 23:59pm, any entry made after this time will not be counted.

Good Luck!

ThePrizeFinder – UK Competitions
Loquax – Home of The Lucky Duck
SuperLucky Blog Giveaways Linky

Cooking with Gousto – Mozzarella Panzanella Salad

Mozzarella Panzanella Salad from Gousto – this lovely Italian salad is quick to prepare and full of tasty, healthy ingredients. It bursts with flavours and can be treated as a started or a light dinner.

It sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

Ok, so let’s start with the ingredients list:

• 2 ciabattas
• 1 red onion
• 250g cherry tomatoes
• 2tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1tbsp dried oregano
• 30g black olives
• 10g fresh basil
• 30g capers
• 1 mozzarella ball
• 1tbsp sugar
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Olive oil

These ingredients will make enough food to feed 2 people (or more if you treat it as a starter).

Method:

Boil a full kettle of water.

Preheat the grill to high.

Peel and finely chop the red onion. Place the onion pieces in a sieve and pour all the boiling water over them (ideally do it over the sink or over large bowl). Place the blanched onions into a bowl and add the red wine vinegar and sugar and mix well. Leave it to soak for a while.

Tear the ciabattas into bite size pieces (or alternatively cut them into nice cubes) and place on a baking tray. Drizzle it with around 2tbs of olive oil; salt and pepper to taste. Place under the grill for 10 minutes or until crispy and golden brown.

Chop the cherry tomatoes in half.

Chop the black olives.

Place the tomatoes, olives, capers and oregano in a salad bowl.

Tear the basil and add into your salad bowl.

Drain the mozzarella and tear into bite size chunks (or again cut it nicely with a sharp knife) and add to the salad bowl.

Drain the onion, discard the marinade and add to the salad bowl.

By this time your ciabatta should be nice and ready. Remove it from the oven / grill and add to your salad.

Mix well and season with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Serve and enjoy!

Cooking with Gousto – Honey Saffron Chicken with Mint & Orange Couscous

Lately I have been cooking with the wonderful people from Gousto. Today I would like to share with you their recipe for Honey Saffron Chicken with Mint & Orange Couscous. Yes you may start drooling….

This is a truly delightful dish bursting with flavours from the earthy cumin to the bright zing of the orange in the couscous (a new discovery for us, but from now it will be a regular feature as couscous goes so well with the orange!).

This lovely Moroccan recipe (as stated below) will serve 2 and it should take you no longer than 25 minutes to complete… unless you like us are taking 100s of pictures during the process or spending extra 15 minutes on separating your oranges into perfect segments 🙂

Ingredients:

• 2 chicken breast fillets, skinned and boned
• 2 oranges
• 2tbs honey
• 1 pinch of saffron
• 1 spring onion
• 120g couscous
• 10g fresh mint
• 1tsp of ground cumin
• ½ chicken stock cube
• 200ml of boiling water
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C.

Butterfly the chicken breast and lay out flat on a worktop board. Cover with some cling film and then with a rolling pin or meat tenderiser flatten out the chicken till it is around 1cm thick at most.

Sprinkle over the cumin and drizzle with some olive oil and massage into the chicken.

Add salt and pepper to taste and place in a roasting tray and pop into the oven for 10-15 minutes until cooked.

Boil a kettle and measure out 200ml of water. Use this water to dissolve half of the chicken stock cube and then add it into your couscous, give it a quick stir, then cover and set aside for a good 10 minutes.

Now for the fiddly part, take your oranges and cut of the top and bottom so they can stand up straight. Cut the skin into sections from top to bottom to help with peeling. Once you have skinned the oranges you now need to remove all the pith. There are two reasons for this, firstly the pith is bitter and so we don’t want it spoiling our dinner and secondly we need to see the segments of the orange for the next step.

With the sharpest knife you own cut the oranges on either side of the membrane of each orange segment. This is best done over a large bowl so you can collect all the juice drops, we will need them later. Remove all the segments and set aside, throw away the core.

Add the honey and the saffron to the orange juice and give a good stir to help release the colour and flavour from the saffron as well as mixing in the honey.

If your chicken is finished then remove from the oven and let rest for a few minutes.

Fine chop your mint and spring onion and set aside.

Cut you chicken into slices and coat with half of the orange-honey-saffron dressing.

Add the orange segments, mint, spring onion and the remaining saffron dressing to the couscous and mix well; then fluff up with a fork.

If you would like you can dress the couscous with a drizzle of olive oil and then season to taste.

To serve just lay the chicken to the side of the couscous salad.

Enjoy!