Once you get past the cardboard on the outside, the contents are straightforward: one pouch of vegetable korma, and one pouch of cumin rice, with none of the extraneous plastic cutlery or serving bowls that are just an annoyance in any decent office. The cooking instructions are similarly straightforward: tear the tops of the pouches slightly, stand them up in the microwave, and cook for three minutes.

Once it’s hot, just dump it in to a bowl to serve. The pack optimistically states that it feeds two, but realistically, it’s a big single serve — big enough that I didn’t serve it all up at first. I did end up polishing off the remainder, though!

The result? Not bad! The curry was very mild, but fairly tasty, with a nice coconut flavour. Surprisingly, the rice was more disappointing — it was harder than I’m used to, as if it wasn’t fully cooked, though that may be personal preference as much as anything. If you’re in the mood for Indian, you could do far worse for the $2.75 I paid for this.

Verdict: Recommended, but only if they’re on special

I’ve had them for about a week and a half now, and I’m super-happy with both — as you’d expect, they’re both nicer to use, and produce better results, than my old Saeco machine and Lux grinder, even though they’re fundamentally fairly similar machines. They’re both built like tanks, and the Silvia has a nice big brass boiler, so its temperature stays quite constant during brewing and it has a tonne of pressure while steaming milk.

The other great thing about the Silvia is that it has a standard 58mm group, just like a commercial machine — indeed, a number of the Silvia’s parts are shared with Rancilio’s commercial machines. That means that, in future, I can look at getting myself a naked portafilter, which I’m sure would be a lot of fun to play with.