The first meal I have already cooked ramen for myself. The following 12 were also all, Ramen. The same goes for a considerable percentage of the next hundred. At 11 years old, as a latchkey, I had mastered the art of the drop of Maruchan, the sliced green onion, chile and soy sauce and the additions of mushrooms. I learned, early, my love of cumin and coriander. Any ingredient, in fact, seemed a fair game.
And so when I say that I always felt a little pride last month after having composed a beautiful bowl of ramen of a HelloFresh delivery meal kit, I speak like a man of great experience.
Photography: Matthew Korfhage
I slide a little, but it’s true: the ramen at home packaged have long been the food of the las, not proud. And it was a rainy Tuesday after hours of work. But when I finished bruating chili oil on a bowl of chicken shoyu pork ramen garnished with a slightly seized chest with grilled chicken with sesame, heavy loaded also with freshly jiggled mushrooms and withered spinach, I felt like I had done something remarkable. Not only had dinner been delicious, I did something. A Tuesday. Without trying too hard.
It is the promise of meal kits like HelloFresh – the reason why people pay more than grocery store, but less than any decent meal delivered, to receive them. It is the promise of a better, but always manageable vision of domesticity, which involves you to prepare a meal well designed without doing the work to design it.
Photography: Matthew Korfhage
Light, shiny, maybe even cosmopolitan
HelloFresh – which, like many popular delivery meals, has started in Germany – is undoubtedly the most successful popularizer of the form. A box of ingredients arrives every week, in individual portion and in bag for meals whose recipes are printed on leaves with a single leaf accessible, with small courageous graphics. All you need are pots, pots, a stove and basic oil and salt and butter basic staples.
Photography: Matthew Korfhage
