On 16th March 2021 I placed my second order with HAAR at Home, for delivery on 9th April. This time I opted for a four course meal devised by both St. Andrew’s based Masterchef the Professionals finalist Dean Banks and London based young Turk Ben Murphy,  at £134.90 for two people, inc £9.95 delivery.  In the previous HAAR at Home make-away, which I scored an overall 8.5/10,  I enjoyed the interesting Asian influence, which I wanted to explore further, and this latest menu included a variation on one of those previous dishes and another Asian classic which I’m fond of; satay.

The first course was “Beef Tartare, onion, smoked mayo, sourdough”.  I mixed the tartare with parsley, shallot and spicy ‘tartare sauce’ and placed the mixture onto toasted sourdough slices. Small pickled onions were halved and filled with the smokey mayo, and finally capers were scattered on top. The finished dish was on the small size, but very tasty. 8/10

Our second course was a variation on the dish we’d tried before; “baked hand dived scallop, Gochujang dressing, fresh spring onion salad”.  This time I cut the scallops from their fixing to their shells before baking them in the oven for 10 minutes with a little sesame oil. Then the dressed spring onions were placed on top along with extra Gochujang sauce.  The previous box used a miso sauce, rather than Gochujang, which I slightly preferred, but I’ll still give this adaptation 8/10

The third or ‘main’ course was Chicken Satay, peanut, turnip, Caesar”. I had to brown a plump chicken breast in a pan before placing in the oven for 15 minutes.  But as you can see in the photo above, the chicken was still pretty raw when Mr A sliced it, so I gave it another 10 minutes in the oven.

To plate up I placed half the now cooked and “satay mix” covered chicken breast on some turnip puree, added a pan fired millefueille potato slice which HAAR called ‘a chip’, placed pan fried chicken thigh on top of it, with half a baby gem lettuce, chicken mayo and chicken skin on top, and baby turnips, on the side.

This was a fairly decent chicken dinner, but in no way could it claim to be a “satay” without the traditional piquant peanut sauce and raw cucumber and onion garnish.  And I really didn’t get the idea of combining turnip into the dish, especially the so-called “Caesar” element.  Disappointing. 5/10

No work was required to prepare the dessert of “Carrot cake, mascarpone, ginger, vanilla”, which came in a sliver tin with a cartoon image of Ben Murphy on the lid. Upon opening the tin I found biscuit crumb and a mini carrot, sitting on top of a carrot trifle, rather than a carrot cake. It was actually rather nice, though it was a little odd to eat a supposedly ‘fine dining’ dessert straight from the tin! 7.5/10

Overall we enjoyed 3 out of the 4 courses, but the disappointment over the so-called satay was significant. The food from HAAR is good, but not exceptional, simple rather than sophisticated. 7/10