We love to entertain at home, but sometimes at the end of a busy business week, the thought of shopping for a home dinner party and then preparing it is just too much. So when we were asked if we’d like to experience Mandira’s Kitchen home delivery Indian cuisine service, needless to say we jumped at this amazing opportunity.

We have a whole circle of friends who absolutely love Indian food. We often have curry nights, and usually we prepare the meals ourselves, not being that keen on takeaways.

We had a look at the Mandira’s Kitchen website and made our choices. We knew that our friends would be open to anything we chose, but we did have one vegan to consider. The dishes are all handmade in small batches, made with fresh produce, and created from family recipes, so they are extremely authentic. There are no preservatives and each delicious meal is blast frozen to preserve taste and goodness.

What We Ordered

After spending a lot of time going through the entire menu, we chose several starters to share: two each of the pea patties, vegetable samosas and lamb samosas, and decided to go with the tomato and date chutney as an accompaniment. For our main dishes we chose one of each of the chicken biryani, chicken xacuti, meen moilee, meen mattar and kaju dhania murgh. For the vegan we chose the enchorer dalna and Kingfisher watercress dal, and lemon rice for all. We were recommended to also try the orange and gin chutney.

Our choices were perfect.

I had set the table with colourful napkins and candles, warmed all of the plates and organised myself to ensure all of the dishes came out in their designated courses. It was easy; each dish from its semi-frozen state takes just four minutes in the microwave, and I kept them warm in the oven until they were all piping hot and ready to serve.

I placed them all on my kitchen work surface and we helped ourselves, all having a little of everything. The aromas were mouth-watering and we were excited to get started. Each dish was packed with flavour, all very different and all totally delicious.

Why It Worked So Well

The packaging, minimal preparing and heating of these dishes made it just so simple. The dishes are reasonably priced, definitely less expensive than putting on your own three-course dinner party, and so much simpler!

We also had a few desserts; the spiced chocolate samosas were absolutely divine. We warmed them through and served them with a scoop each of the watermelon and tamarind sorbet and the lychee martini sorbet—my personal favourite. This all went down very well and was a great end to a fabulous Indian evening.

More Than Just Food

Sadly I was so rapt choosing from the vast menu I neglected to check out the rest of the website. You can actually buy beautiful Indian tableware. I was devastated that I didn’t see this; I so wanted to create a real Indian experience, and I did, but next time I will be making some purchases to improve on that.

You can also buy a gift voucher. This is a fantastic idea—what a great gift for that busy person in your life. May I cheekily suggest you send it to someone who will invite you back!

We had the most superb evening with great friends and the feedback from them all was that the evening and the food was one of the best they’d had in a long time. They said they loved each dish and that they were all different from the regular Indian dishes—flavoursome and succulent.

Next time I consider having another curry night I think I will be hosting it using Mandira’s Kitchen menu and delivery service. (Please note delivery is free over £75.)

Contact Mandira’s Kitchen

W: Mandiras Kitchen
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Written by Debbie Stone, Global Editor for the Luxuria Group