Food review-- Patak's meals

I've been awfully foodie lately.  Guess that's just the way it goes, sometimes.

Anyway, my local grocery store started carrying Patak's Meals.  I've been a fan of their various jarred curry-style "simmer sauces" for a while now (mmm, Jalfrezi), and it's damn hard to find Indian frozen lunches that taste remotely good.  Ethnic Gourmet, I'm looking at you.  And now I'm not, because you're vaguely wretched and I don't want to look at you anymore.  Anyway, back to Patak's.

The first thing to note is that these aren't frozen-- they're room-temp packaged meals, which wouldn't be interesting, except that one of the offerings is Butter Chicken, and the room-temp chicken always makes me nervous.  It shouldn't, I guess, but I approached that one with some trepidation.

So far, I've tried the Butter Chicken and the Lentil Curry, with the Chickpea Curry still in the pantry waiting for its turn.  And I have to say, not too shabby, Patak's.  While still not at the level of home-made Indian food, these are both a definite notch up from pretty much every other packaged Indian meal I've ever tried.  Medium spice, just enough to make me sweat a little but not blow out my taste buds, and surprisingly low-fat (but not low-calorie, which is something I really appreciate).

There are of course a couple of negative points.  The texture of the rice is a little odd-- I'm not sure if it's just the variety of rice that they use, or something about the way they process it to be room-temp stable, but it seems... off.  Not exactly gummy, but... heavy, somehow.  It's not unappetizing, but I notice it.  The other point is possibly more idiosyncratic.  Something in the Butter Chicken-- maybe some tomato paste in the sauce, maybe a thickener, I don't know exactly what-- gives me a shockingly vivid sense memory of eating Spaghetti-O's when I was much younger.  It's a trifle disconcerting when you're in the middle of a very different cuisine.

Anyway, the verdict:  Absolutely.  They're priced about the same as many frozen meals, and I can keep them in  the pantry where they take up less space and keep longer.  I plan to keep a few of these on hand more or less permanently (I'll probably look for a sale and try to stock up) in case of lunch emergency.