Recap: Miss Fresh #8

Another Miss Fresh is here! Having a box arrive after a trip is usually a great way except I forgot how busy I was going to be. Thankfully, my husband helped out to with making a good few of these dishes so excuse the pictures for not being plated exactly as I would however the star of the meals are all there, except for one. We didn’t get a picture of the first meal we made. The next box is coming soon since April is a somewhat busy month and I’ve caught up with a lot of things.

Let’s check out the meals!

Miss Fresh #8

Tandoori Vegetable Naan-Wich

Let’s start with the first meal that was made quite out of place of how I’d make these meals since I usually put the vegetable ones as the later ones. However, its all good since due to the ingredients, my husband was the only one that could eat this one. He made it and had it. I can’t say he’s a fan because I believe a portion of it is still sitting in the fridge. However, he did add his own twist to it by adding some protein in the form of scrambled eggs.

Citrusy Herbed Chicken Legs

The star of this box has to be this meal! Perhaps, I’m a little biased since I soon came to realize there was a lot of adaptation with the other two meals to work around my intolerance so my husband ate most of it. Funny enough, he cooked this one up. Now, I love chicken so this was a winner already. The best part of this meal had to go to learning a new way of making sweet potatoes for dinner using lemon. It had this fantastic sweet and sour sort of element and just tasted so awesome.

Sausage and Vegetable Stuffed Mushrooms

Look at these cute little stuffed mushrooms. Miss Fresh boxes was the first to introduce how to make these stuffed mushrooms and I was excited about it being a part of this box. Of course, I have been so busy and tired that I ended up garnishing all four of the mushrooms with cheese so means, its down to my husband, the mushroom-hating person to take care of it. To my surprise, he liked it a lot. Guess this is how we’re introducing more veggies into our meals from now on. This is paired up with pesto pasta which was made separately afterwards but was not photographed. Sorry about that. A huge thank you to Miss Fresh this time for adding an extra little plastic bag for the pesto so avoid the spillage mess that I had in a previous box. I’m glad to see improvements and thoughts made every single time. 🙂

Coconut Beef Curry

Finally, the last meal is the Coconut Beef Curry with a side of Jasmine Rice. This smelled so good while it was cooking and other than the simmering time being longer and maybe preparation, it was relatively easy to make. Although, we did do this one as a collaborated effort since I’m not too good with cooking beef so my husband took over the duties. Although in the end, because I decided to keep in the Thai chili and it would be spicy that it is also my husband’s dinner.

Overall…probably a lack of judgement on my part for this box but its always nice to still get some good meals out of the box. The meals themselves were pretty good even if I couldn’t taste them. They surprisingly expanded my husband’s liking for certain vegetables which is always a good thing. With the help of this box, we can now make mushrooms for everyone. That’s pretty awesome since I have portobello mushroom cravings every little while.

What meals appeal to you from this box? What do you think?

Lemon and Herb Roasted Chicken!

I’m back with recipes!  Its been way too long. I have never felt this great to be back into the cooking and baking.

First up was from two weekends ago, I made Lemon and Herb Roasted Chicken otherwise called “The Roastess with the Mostest” from Looneyspoons Collection.

When in doubt, I always make some chicken and when you have a whole chicken, you just mix up some marinade and pour it over the chicken and stick it in the oven.  When you do recipes like that, its really the marinade and seasoning that makes all the difference. This one was quite different actually. It was fun to explore into the fresh herbs as seasoning.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken (about 4lbs/1.8kg)

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp minced fresh rosemary

1 tbsp minced fresh thyme

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp olive oil

1/2 tsp each salt and ground black pepper

1 tbsp  lemon juice

1. Move oven rack to bottom third of oven. Preheat oven to 425F.  Place a small rack inside a roasting pan.  Pour 1 cup water in pan.  Rinse chicken inside and out, and pat dry with paper towels

2. In a small bowl, mix together mustard, brown sugar, rosemary, thyme, garlic, oil, salt and pepper to make a paste.  Set aside.

3. Squeeze juice from lemon inside cavity of chicken. Rub reserved paste over surface of  chicken, and using your fingers, carefully rub paste between skin and meat on breast and thighs.

4. Place chicken on rack breast-side down.  Roast, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Remove chicken from oven and flip over.  Add a bit more water if it has evaporated.  Return to oven and roast for 35 to 40 more minutes, depending on size of bird.  If chicken browns too quickly, cover it loosely with foil.  When cooked, legs should move easily in sockets and thigh juices should be clear (not pink) when pierced with a small knife.

5. Remove chicken from oven and let rest for 10 minutes before carving.

This is already modified to how I did it.  The original recipe has the marinade with 1 tsp grated lemon zest mixed in before you set it aside.  Also, if you have a lemon, you could use freshly squeezed lemon juice into the cavity and then use the rest of the lemon and sit it into the cavity and then tie the legs up before you place it in the oven.  I would assume this would give it more of a zesty taste.

This chicken is very tender.  I’ve never baked chicken where there was additional water at the bottom of the pan to evaporate.  I think its what makes it less dry. The way I did it was more herb roasted tasting than lemon.  I actually don’t mind that as I’m not particularly into the zesty taste, either is my boyfriend so I think it worked well.