What better choice of food could there be for a Sunday night before a bank holiday, than a curry?
The only question is, if you are in the middle of the Suffolk countryside like I am this weekend, who is going to stay sober enough to pick up the takeaway, or slave over a stove for hours to make it? Well, quite simply no one, if you have Rafi’s Spicebox nearby.
Rafi’s Spicebox is an Asian cookshop specialising in ‘Curry Packs’. Invented by its founder and cookery author Rafi Fernandez. Rafi’s Curry Packs mean that even if you have never cooked a curry before, you can make an authentic curry in the comfort of your own home in a matter of minutes (25 max), without investing in a plethora of herbs and spices.
When you go to the shop, you order your curry, then say whether you like it hot, medium, mild etc. Each individual spice is then carefully measured, coupled with cooked dried onions and delicately placed into a sealed packet – ‘curry pack’ – for you to take home. For the preparation at home, there is no chopping of herbs or onions, you don’t even need to add oil, all you need to do is to cut up meat or fish, add liquid, stir and hey presto.
Depending on the curry, the most you will need to add is liquid, which could be coconut milk, water, or for a tikka masala, some tinned tomatoes, meat/fish/vegies, then stir in the meat and cook for a few minutes. What could be easier?
You can choose from 27 regional varieties and spices, garlic, chillies and onions, which are carefully blended according to your taste. Simple, delicious and even better, cheap as chips at £3.99 a pack which serves between 4 and 5 people depending on how hungry you are; so it beats a takeaway and is far nicer and healthier than any ready meal you will find in the supermarkets.
There are currently only two Rafi’s stores in the UK, one in York and the other in Sudbury, Suffolk, but they do have an online shop which is geared up to send curry packs across mainland Europe, USA and even Australia – yipeee!
For more information and a brief history, follow this link to their website:
