Meal Subscription Boxes: meal box

Home Chef: BBQ Summer Salmon

3:46 PM

I'll throw this out there. I have zero experience cooking fish. I figured it would be nice to try to learn for my husband's sake. This box offered BBQ summer salon with snap pea and fennel slaw. It looked pretty yummy:

The Contents:

Ingredients: sugar snap peas, fennel bulb (I had definitely never seen one of these before), radishes, green onions, a lemon, white wine vinegar, sugar, salmon filets, BBQ sauce, and goat cheese crumbles

The Preparation:

Again, this recipe called for cutting something "on a bias." The recipe card provided an explanation this time: on an angle. Thank you!

Step one was to cut the peas and green onions on a bias, slice the fennel and radish into thin strips/circles, and slice the lemon in half

Next, the slaw was made by combining the juice of the lemon, white wine vinegar, olive oil, sugar, salt, pepper, snap peas, fennel, and the green onion. While the salmon cooked, the slaw was put into the fridge to chill:

The last step was to cook the salmon. This was the scary part for me, and I was relying heavily on the recipe card's suggested times. I put the salmon in the pan and my husband walked in about here, asking what the white goo was:

I had no idea. The recipe card didn't mention it. After some Googling, I learned that this is called albumin, and is normal. The best way to avoid it is to not overcook your fish. Weirdly though, this started forming almost instantly. I had no idea what to do, other than try to push it away. Fish is weird...

I forgot to take a picture, but during the final two minutes of cooking, the salmon is brushed with BBQ sauce.

The Final Product:

The Verdict:

0/10 - but probably not Home Chef's fault.

I did not try this dish, because I'm not a fan of fish. My husband didn't like anything about the side salad. "The peas were too tough (uncooked). I don't like radishes." He also didn't like the salmon, but was pretty sure that was our fault. He's only ever baked salmon. Neither of us had experience cooking it in a pan.

I think this was our first true Home Chef fail. For a recipe we weren't sure about, I'm not too upset.

#homechef

Home Chef: Chicken Quinoa Stir-Fry

7:30 PM

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Home Chef: Sherry Wine Demi-Glace Flat-Iron Steak

7:34 PM

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Home Chef: Truffled Mushroom Risotto

5:30 PM

The third and final recipe of my first Home Chef box was truffled mushroom risotto with truffle oil, chives, and white wine. Look at the beautiful recipe card:

The only thing I knew about risotto was that it's probably one of the most complicated dishes ever because it seems like everyone on Hell's Kitchen messes it up. Am I right? Given that, I wondered how someone like me was going to pull it off.

The Contents:

Ingredients: butter, wild mushrooms, parsley, peppercorns, truffle oil, chives, white cooking wine, arborio rice, shallot, and a vegetable bouillon cube

As usual, the first step was to prepare the veggies. Slice the mushrooms, chop the parsley and chives, dice the shallot, and crush the peppercorns. The peppercorns came already crushed-ish. I didn't feel like I made any difference by crushing them further with a spoon. But hey, who knows?

The next step was to prepare the broth by dissolving the bouillon cube in water. I saved you a picture on that step. It wasn't that riveting, I promise.

Next, saute the mushrooms, then add them to the broth:

Next, the onions were cooked in the skillet with some oil. Shortly after, the dry rice was added and cooked for two minutes.

The next step was the most intensive. To actually make the risotto, 1/2 cup of broth (sans mushrooms) was added to the rice and stirred constantly until fully absorbed. Once absorbed, another 1/2 cup was added, and so on. This process was repeated for 20 minutes while stirring constantly:

At 20 minutes in, the risotto was supposed to be chewy. Mine still tasted a little raw, but I was pretty much out of mushroom broth. I cooked/stirred for five minutes more and decided to call it done. To finish up the risotto, any remaining broth, mushrooms, butter, half the chives, and some peppercorns were added:

The Final Product:

During plating, a "luxurious drizzle" of truffle oil is added.

The Verdict:

Excellent idea, poor execution on my part. I followed the directions exactly as written, so I don't know why my rice wasn't done. I tried Googling some risotto discussion and read that the constant stirring maybe isn't as important as the recipe said it was. Maybe my constant stirring kept it from cooking as well as it should have? Who knows!

This dish was mushroom overload. I think I would have loved it if it was chewier. My husband thought it was okay, but to be fair, this dish was all my pick. I had a feeling he wouldn't be won over.

This was our last Home Chef recipe. All in all, it was a wonderful box! Check out my next post for a Home Chef recap.

If you are interested in trying out Home Chef, click here to receive $30 off of your first box!