First adventure with Blue Apron

Last week, I got to play with Blue Apron for the first time--and it was a lot of fun! Thank you so much to M & M for giving us a trial and allowing us the great experience. It started off a bit rocky...their delivery service couldn't deliver the box inside our building, and so the package arrived 5 days after we were supposed to receive it. This meant that most of the perishable food had to be thrown out. I still wanted to try out all the recipes though, so I actually re-bought all of the veggies in the recipes. 

We got three meals:

My favorite was the roasted brussels sprouts and freekeh salad. It was a salad of cracked freekeh, finely chopped raw brussels sprouts (as the lettuce component), oven roasted brussels sprouts, Gala apple, parsley, pickled golden raisins, and chopped roasted hazelnuts. The salad was topped with fresh Parmesan cheese and saba.

The Tom Yum soup recipe was really good and tasted very similar to Tom Yum soups that you get at restaurants. The soup consisted of tofu, stir-fried mushrooms, green onions, garlic, lime zest, lime, lemongrass, cabbage, ginger, coconut milk, and Tom Yum paste.

Last, we had a Cardamom-spiced butternut squash gratin. This was essentially a butternut squash casserole. It included red quinoa, kale, boiled butternut squash, and a bechamel sauce (ginger, leeks, ground cardamom, saffron powder, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper, flour, coconut cream, and water). It was topped of with golden raisins, roasted almonds, and Panko breadcrumbs.

I think I have mixed reviews about Blue Apron. The recipes weren't too different from what I often make. For example, the butternut squash gratin was similar to my quinoa stuffed squash, and I have recently been trying to get into Asian soups. Also, the time spent on each recipe is similar to the time I usually spend cooking on the weekends--so it didn't serve as a time-saving convenience. Still, I think that the overall experience was fun for a few reasons:

1. It was nice to get out of my recipe rut and try out new variations

2. I learned a couple of handy tricks

•  If you are too lazy to zest a citrus fruit, you can thinly peel the fruit with a peeler, and then finely chop those peels
• You can pickle raisins by simply soaking them in a hot vinegar/water mixture for a few minutes. This gives them a more tart flavor for salads.
• I made my first bechamel sauce (a white creamy sauce)--I wouldn't have thought to add the flour as a thickening agent!

3. I got to work with a few ingredients that I had never worked with before:

• This was my first time cooking with leeks and I really liked the flavor they added to the gratin.
• This was my first time making freekeh, and I think I will try using that as a quinoa or farro substitute in the future.
• Saba, the salad dressing, is similar to a balsamic vinaigrette, but is a little sweeter. It is made from grapes.
• I didn't know that you can buy Tom Yum paste, that (along with the lemongrass) helps you achieve that very characteristic Tom Yum soup flavor.

I think I'll definitely try Blue Apron again sometime :)