I'm not the best person in creative cooking. Yes, when someone gives me a recipe I eventually know what to do with it, but actually thinking of something I find very difficult sometimes. Luckily nowadays there are services which help you with this, by delivering your ingredients and coming up with dishes which you only have to follow.
In Holland we have a service called 'Hello Fresh'. It is not the cheapest, but it is convenient for people without inspiration but who do like fresh food. What also is a cool feature is that you get to work with ingredients that you don't know that well, or make a dish that you normally wouldn't try. I haven't been disappointed as yet.
So first lets start with this 'Hello Fresh' thingy. Because the cool thing is that in your order you put in for how many people it is for, and that way nothing will be left over. So you don't buy a bag of potatoes, you get how many potatoes you need for that dish. Not much going to waste over there.
Also with images and decent how-to's you can really make this all happen, without having too much knowledge on what you are doing. The only requirment? You really need to know how to multitask, because quite often these dishes have a lot of steps in there. But what you can also see is the stats on your dish. How many calories, expected cooking time, really everything you want to know.
The Basics
This is how you get your food delivered. As you see everything is still in its orginal norm and it is packed in the amount that you need. Perfect for someone like me I would say. The only thing that can still get better is having it in less plastic but in something that is more recyclable.
Honestly, I think that also won't take too long anymore before they make it that way, in reusable paper bags or something.
Homemade fries
So one of the things in this particular dish are the homemade fries from the oven. Chop up the potatoes in pieces from around 1.5 centimeter. Mix the potatoe pieces with some olive oil and some salt and pepper and stick in the oven for around 35-40 minutes at 210 degrees Celsius.
Now I don't know about you, but that can't go wrong. Like it really can't.
The stew
Start with chopping up your garlic, your onion and carrot. Prepare 250 ml of stock. I used veggie stock, because that is what I had in the house. Stuff like stock and salt and pepper isn't delivered with the food. They expect you to have a sort of basic supplies for cooking in the house.
Heat some vegetable oil and add the onion and garlic for a hot. After 2 minutes add the carrot. Leave it in for 5 minutes. After that add the stock, the lamb meat, the cranberry compote (that was delivered pre made. Easy!).
Toss in the Thyme and the basil leaf and let it simmer. Take out the leave and the thyme after 20 minutes. This is only just for flavour.
In the mean time prepare the salade which is chopped chicory and pear. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon and add the raisons and some parsley. Now my own golden tip would be to remove the heart of the chicory. To me it was a bit too bitter salade, and this reduces that. Had I only known before ;)
Et voila!
Well there you have it, you very own lamb-stew with chicory salade and homemade oven fries. If I would have to make this dish myself and get all of the ingredients in the supermarket, I would actually never come to this, so for me this whole Hello Fresh thing is more of an experiment to do every now and then.
Would I recommend it as family food? Well not really, I guess the recipes are a little bit too complex and time consuming for when a whole hungry family is waiting. But it is perfect for when you want to make something just a little bit more expensive.
You will see more of these dropping by from me over the next time!