This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Business & Tech

Get 'Curried Away' with Gourmet Lunch Boxes

Curried Away provides nutritious four-course, gourmet lunch boxes delivered right to your office.

With the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley life it’s hard to find a mid-day lunchbox meal worthy of a mother’s approval—think Kix’s Mother Approved seal of distinction. Until now, it's been hard to find.

To the rescue is Curried Away, Zareen Khan’s culinary labor of love serves up four-course, home-made lunches delivered right to your office for as much as you might spend on a fast-food “value” meal.

Khan started Curried Away in 2010, and has since expanded from “Near Eastern” cooking classes and frozen kebabs to delivery lunch boxes worthy of Japanese bento box notoriety.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

Tired of the life product management brought her, Khan said she wanted to do something for herself and fell back on her culinary upbringing. By specializing in the foods she grew up with in Pakistan, Khan’s meals are what she serves her own children.

”I don’t like to lose traditional ways of doing things,” Khan said “I stick to the traditional recipes,” she said.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

She didn’t grow up with most of the commercial foods prepared in Indian and Pakistani restaurants, such as chicken tikka masala.

As the economy got worse and companies rarely commissioned large scale caterings, Khan began offering her motherly meals as lunch boxes. She took note of the current state of mid-day meal choices as “preservative-laden, artificially flavored and unnaturally colored.”

“I never grew up with red colored chicken,” she said “it’s so artificial.”

Curried Away offers lunch boxes three days a week (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) and will deliver the boxes anywhere in Silicon Valley from Los Gatos to Santa Clara. The lunch boxes can be ordered by phone or online with a simple drop-down menu and will be delivered to your office or can be picked up any time at Cupertino’s Donut Wheel on De Anza Boulevard.

Khan said she keeps costs down by sticking to a preset menu each day, prepared as she would for catering only to be parceled out and delivered separately. A preset menu can quickly become mundane, even in spite of actual saffron included in her rice (other restaurants use yellow coloring to keep the costs down), but Khan keeps the light-hearted banter of the kitchen table alive during a business lunch with “seasonal” themes.

During the month of April, the month of the dreaded tax day, Curried Away held a “Tax Holiday Lunch” menu offering lunches with clever names such as “Tax Shelter,” a saffron-infused Basmati rice pilaf with cranberries and green onions, and “Itemize This!,” Khan’s tender chicken meatballs served in a mildly spiced tomato ragout.

Two years old Curried Away is still a small company. Khan’s husband writes the descriptions on the website and her son came up with the company’s original name, Curry Village Foods. With such a small company, Khan still cooks all the meals on the menu.

”Nothing goes out without me being involved,” Khan said, “and I’m going to be like this going forward.”

While catering to valley giants such as Shutterfly, Mozilla and Symantec Khan hasn’t forgotten her roots. Khan still sells the frozen kebabs she gave her neighbors and offers the cooking classes she gave her friends. In addition to selling kebabs on her website, her kebabs can also be found at India Cash and Carry on De Anza Boulevard.

As the sole proprietor Khan works long hours just to keep the lights on but the tradeoff is it gives Khan complete control over the entire process and she’s determined to never cook anything she wouldn’t make at home, or with ingredients she wouldn’t buy for her family.

Khan pays close attention to the sourcing of her ingredients.

“The eggs we use are from Trader Joe’s, even though they are more expensive,” Khan said. “Trader Joe’s is the only vendor that I am satisfied on the quality. Most other vendors, the chickens are de-beaked and are not provided a nesting box, which I find very emotionally disturbing.”

Her decision to make all beef meals with 100 percent Halaal beef isn’t just to comply with some of her customers' religious laws, it’s because she knows the cows have been raised well and slaughtered humanely.

At every turn she buys organic, sustainable produce along with humanely raised non-factory farm meat and eggs, even though it cuts into her margins.

”It’s so easy to substitute margarine for butter, just for the costs,” she said, adding “my family doesn’t need that extra income.”

Khan’s commitment doesn’t end with her company, as she is also a member of Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and the Weston A Price Foundation, which are dedicated to protecting the rights of farmers and animals. She is also a member of FarmSantuary, which supports nutritional agriculture and education.

Khan said she hopes to expand her company to include a gourmet food-truck offering a take-out menu and to find her pre-made meals in the frozen section of supermarkets, but that's still in the future.

Today she’ll be happy if her quality meals can inspire people to demand a change in the food industry.

“The change has to come from the consumer,” Khan said. “The consumer has to demand [it] and then only will things change.”

Curried Away can be reached by email at info@curryvillagefoods.com, or by phone at 408-647-5582. More information can also be found on the website http://www.curriedawaysf.com/.

Are you Patched in? Get the FREE Patch newsletter each morning, register here.

For more news about Cupertino, "Like" us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?