Kitchen Table Passport Subscription Box Review – July 2015 Sweden

July’s Kitchen Table Passport whisked us off to Sweden!   Kitchen Table Passport is a meal-centered cooking and exploration kit.  Each kit features a traditional dish from the featured region, providing a recipe, spices, and pairing suggestions.  You can subscribe to the “Full Experience” with cultural information and mementos along with the monthly dish, or a combination of the three, or just the spices and recipe. With the Full Experience,  the dish is the centerpiece of the evening, but you also receive “discovery items,” a couple mementos emblematic of the featured culture, as well as a stack of well-photographed cards replete with trivia and information.

The handy checklist helps you inventory your items and get ready for a big evening.

The welcome card introduces you to the featured culture and provides some suggestions for serving your dish in an authentic way.  The Swedish box outlined the “rules” of a successful Smorgasbord. I thought the only rule was to put all the food on the table.

The contents of the kit.  At left are the mementos, tiny items suitable for passing around the table.  In the upper right is the stack of Discovery Cards.  Bottom right is the shopping list and spice packet for the featured dish.

Discover

The front of the Discovery Cards features high-quality photos showing some Swedish cultural touchstones.

The back of each card is loaded with trivia across several categories of interest (food, industry, vikings, etc) and several more photos relevant to the topics.

Front of a card.  Each card is approximately 8″ X 5″ and printed on glossy cardstock.  The photos are amazingly clear and really beautiful.

The back of a card.  More great photos and facts.  The cards are meant to encourage table-side conversation.  You may want to peruse the cards ahead of time, though, if you have a highly political dinner group, to head off any diatribes on universal medicine, etc. Or maybe not!

Mementos

The mementos are tiny items that can be passed around the table and make wonderful keepsakes afterwards.  The Sweden mementos were a Dala horse and a nature-themed bookmark.

Taste

Everything in the meal kit.

The shopping list comprises easily found items.  I like that it even suggests an alternative for the lingonberry jam, the one item that may be hard for some to locate.  Note that we live in the middle of nowhere and had no problems picking it up at our local grocery store.

The recipe is simple and clear.  We absolutely loved this method of cooking meatballs, and I think we will use it int the future for both Swedish and Italian-style meatballs.  Frying them in a pan and finishing them in the oven with broth kept them from burning on the bottom (the issue with baking meatballs) and allowed preparation without sauce for more versatility (versus braised-in-sauce method).

The spice mix had everything it it, including the salt.  Nutmeg, allspice, and ginger provide the characteristic flavor for the dish.

Rolling the meatballs.  I liked the preparation method suggested in the recipe — not only was the cooking method great, but mixing the cream and breadcrumbs together first saturated the crumbs, keeping them from absorbing too much of the fat from the meat.  We used a 1/2 pork 1/2 beef mixture, and we used a bit more meat that the suggested 1 lb, so our meatballs were a little milder and perhaps firmer than they would be if made according to the recipe as written.  I also reduced the onion to about 1/4 the amount, as I had to be able to have it be invisible (once minced) to avoid detection by the children.

Success!  The kids loved them and asked for seconds.  The lingonberry was also a hit.  Our kids got a real kick out of the trivia, and were absolutely delighted that Candy Crush and MineCraft were created in Sweden (along with Spotify and Skype)!

The baby liked them too — tamping several chunks into his mouth.  He may not be great with a fork, but he knows good food when he tastes it.

At $24.95 a month, this is not inexpensive compared to other spice subscriptions, but there are multiple other options available depending on your preferences: Taste Only (Spices & Recipe) – $9.95, a combination of two of the Taste + Discover + Mementos experiences – $19.95 (you choose which two).  You can also subscribe for 6 or 12 months to the full experience and knock the price down further.  It did come with mementos and a stack of interesting cards — there is more to the full experience box than just the meal.  I like the concept of a culturally immersive dinner, and the meal and informational items in the box were well-thought out and enjoyable.  We had a great time and a really great Kitchen Table Passport night!

Visit Kitchen Table Passport to subscribe or find out more!