MISE by Selina Ocampo Elevates The Home-Cooking Experience
Meet MISE. This new DIY kit is one not to miss! Selina Ocampo has created a delivery-first food concept to elevate your at-home dining and entertaining experience. The woman behind the brand was educated at the Culinary Center in New York, apprenticed at Tuome, learned from chef Gilbert Pangilinan and assisted in running Manila House’s five restaurants. Late in 2019, she began a small home consultancy service called Over Easy: a personal and curated home consultancy service based on a client’s needs for their kitchen.
Today she brings us MISE, where Selina presents a selection of galettes which she explains as a free form pie that is a vessel for savoury and sweet fillings. She shares that the brand’s identity stems from the culinary term 'mise en place' which is commonly used in kitchens around the globe. It is the process of preparing ingredients prior to a restaurant’s meal service, making sure that all a dish’s components are ready for its creation. This perfectly summarises what MISE is about, as Selina’s goal is to unburden the home-cook. She wants people to be able to prepare spectacular meals without feeling afraid of the kitchen or without feeling stressed by time or an overly complicated grocery shopping list.
Selina noticed that the pandemic sparked a fire within every home cook. She observed that with work from home, people had more time to connect with their food and were more mindful of meals. Despite the fact that more people were eager to or curious about venturing into the kitchen there was still an issue: “I realised that there was an underlying problem: the prep, the production, the race between time, the ridiculous pile of dishes that doesn’t seem to ever go down.” These were some of the many challenges that home cooks face every day in that kitchen that Selina hoped to alleviate.
“My concept is about minimising stress. Stress comes in many forms. In this case, the stress of time and transport was something I wanted to consider. My savoury galettes are vacuumed sealed and can stay in the fridge up to three to five days. I bake each galette 80 per cent of the way and cool it down. The rest of the 20 per cent is for my customer to complete in the comfort of their own home. I felt this formula was the closest I can get to keeping my product in its purest form as well as cancel out the pressure of time” shares Selina.
Nowadays, we have all been ordering a lot of food from our favourite restaurants and the many new businesses that have arisen through the powers of social media. Throughout this time, Selina realised that she had a big problem with how a lot of food transported. “One of my main issues about ready-to-eat food was that there was always something soggy or wilted, or the temperature of the food wasn’t at its best.” For her, there is no comparison; experiencing food straight from the source, is how a dish should be enjoyed. Therefore, creating a ready-to-cook kit, where each step is thought through, pre-measured and organised for the consumer was the solution to her woes and how she could deliver her love for cuisine to us, in the best way.
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“The most challenging step was creating the instructional guide. It was difficult to determine what was obvious vs. what wasn’t” Selina divulges, sharing that she had to think about catering to the queries and needs of total novices to the kitchen. “I had my dishes tested by the most clueless person in the kitchen. As soon as he got it right, I knew I was solid” she shares.
With the MISE meal kit, each dish contains 3 steps and takes around 30 minutes or less to prepare! Selina explains that MISE removes the prep, the long hours, the random ingredients that have no place in your daily recipes, the extra trips to the sink, and leaves you with the fun part- the final assembly.
Having the combined experience of a professional kitchen and home consultancy helped Selina understand the challenges home cooks endure every day. “Soon I will be releasing a frozen food line as well as more pre-portioned and partially prepared meal kits. My goal is to explore more cuisines and dishes that can suit every need or craving. MISE is continuously growing and evolving. I can’t wait to grow amongst my clients and continuously share my passion for food and home service.”
By listening and comprehending what people need in order to feel more at home in the kitchen, and in order to whip up a beautiful dining experience at home is how she conceptualises what else to concoct. Selina envisions MISE to be a brand that allows home cooks to impress guests and themselves. She hopes to inspire and ignite a passion for creating food in others too.
“I read something that said, ‘love is something you can taste’. To create or recreate food is my purest and truest expression of love” she shares with heart.
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Check out their Instagram here.
- Photography Miguel Nacianceno