By BRIGITTE ROZARIO

Tired of pureeing food for your baby? Fed up of the bottled baby food in the supermarkets?

Well, there's now a way for you to get fresh baby food if you're in the Klang Valley.

Dish Deli, a cute little restaurant in Mont Kiara Solaris in Kuala Lumpur, sells frozen meals for children as well as Gourmet Goo – the shop's brand of baby food which is also frozen.
 

A container of Gourmet Goo baby food.

Managing director Heidi Shamsuddin says, “There was nothing like this in the market. All the baby food was in jars with long shelf life. This is like the homemade food that you would make for your baby. Cook a huge batch of vegetables and puree it. That's what I used to do for my two older children when they were babies. In fact all these recipes are what I used to make for them. So it's all more or less tried and tested recipes.”

The baby food includes:

Suitable from 6 months:
1. Sweet Vegetable Medley (sweet potato, carrot and pumpkin)
2. Papaya & Pear
3. Pumpkin & Pear
4. Mango & Banana

Suitable from 8 months:
1. Spaghetti Beef Bolognese
2. Chicken Rice
3. Baby Dhall
4. Spinach & Potato

According to Heidi, prior to setting up Gourmet Goo she did a lot of research on which food is good for babies and at which ages.

“A six month old baby might not be able to eat the same food as a nine or 10 month old baby would eat. When I did the research it was very meticulously done. You have to make sure the food you are giving your child is suitable for that age.

“Gourmet Goo is baby food for babies six months onwards. There are the chunkier versions for babies eight months onwards. The chunkier baby food is good to encourage the baby to start chewing.”
 

Heidi with son Haris. She promises that Gourmet Goo only uses fresh ingredients.

Heidi informs that the promise to her customers is that Gourmet Goo uses only fresh vegetables and fruits. The cooking is all done in the Dish Deli kitchen and a blast freezer is used to quickly freeze the baby food after it's cooked.

A blast freezer reduces the food temperature from 90 degrees C to 3 degrees C in no more than 90 minutes. That means the food still has the nutrients and that's why no preservatives are added. It also maintains the taste and the texture of the food.

According to Heidi, if there's pumpkin and potatoes in the baby food you can still taste the pumpkin and potatoes when you eat it at a later date.

Blast freezing the food also means that it's not in the 3-70 degrees Celsius range for a long time. Bacteria in food tends to increase the longer the food is in that temperature range.

“With a blast freezer, because it brings down the temperature of the food very fast, you're in that temperature range for a shorter amount of time so the bacteria has less time to grow. So, it's actually good in terms of hygiene and making sure there is minimum exposure to bacteria.

“Technically, Gourmet Goo can be kept for up to a year as long as it's kept in the freezer. On our packaging we say six months because we wouldn't want anyone to keep it for a year. Most of our customers buy in small quantities and they come back week by week anyway,” says Heidi.

The Gourmet Goo baby food is packaged in 95g containers which are microwave and freezer safe. They cost RM4.80 each.

All you have to do after taking it out of the freezer is put it in another microwaveable bowl and stick it in the microwave. You can also heat it up in the microwave while it is still in the container. Alternatively, you can heat the baby food over a fire provided you put it in a pan first. Or, you could even steam it.

It doesn't have to be defrosted first.
 

The inside of Dish Deli.

Heidi opened Dish Deli last November with Annette Isaac who is the director.

However, Gourmet Goo is mainly Heidi's brainchild.

She explains: “I used to live in Britain for some years where they actually had fresh frozen baby food in the supermarkets. When I came back to Malaysia I thought it would be nice to have that here because it's quite a time-consuming process to cook for the baby. I thought it would be something nice to have as an alternative. For people who don't have time to cook and puree baby food they can just buy it or even for those who do have time to cook but want some variety.”

Both her children were the testing ground for her baby food recipes.

Heidi says she really doesn't like the baby food that comes in jars and sits on supermarket shelves.

“They have a shelf life longer than your child's age and even if they say it's preservative-free obviously they have to use some preservative to allow it to have such a long shelf life. If you taste it, it's tasteless. They all taste the same. The pumpkin tastes the same as the carrot. All the varieties have that same taste.

“I just think that when you're introducing food to your baby, it should give them the same pleasure that we get from eating food. So, why not give them something that's fresh, that tastes real, that doesn't taste like it just came out of a jar.”

For those who have toddlers or bigger children, you can also buy fresh frozen meals at Dish Deli – lasagne, spaghetti bolognese, cottage pie, roast chicken and fisherman's pie being some of the dishes you can get.
 

The lancashire hotpot served at Dish Deli.

The deli also sells homemade food such as lancashire hotpot, roast chicken, chicken casserole, spaghetti bolognese, lasagne and cottage pie. Perhaps not the homemade dishes every Malaysian is used to but definitely for Heidi who says these are the types of food she cooks at home.

These are all her own recipes or those of her family's.

Dish Deli is trying to introduce some local dishes in time for Ramadan.

Currently, there is a delivery service for the Mont Kiara Solaris area. Depending on the response the delivery service could be extended to other areas. The shop also does functions and birthdays.

Dish Deli is open Tues-Fri, from noon to 10pm, and on Sat and Sun it's open from 10am-10pm. For more information, go to www.dish.com.my.