Recap: Goodfood #27

Welcome to the next recap of Goodfood for last week’s box! One repeat and a few that sounded pretty good. Bowls usually are surprisimg winners, burgers always have a nice twist and well, sometimes meatballs and couscous are the simple combo that we need.

Grilled Tofu Dragon Bowls
with multicolored carrots, snow peas & red rice

Tofu isn’t our cooking specialty so a lot of it is either at my mom’s or when we get a Goodfood box. My husband isn’t a huge fan of it either. We ended up getting this because we have loves past meals in bowls. Granted, usually it is something I have generally tried before and this one, I haven’t. However, the tofu and the red rice is super nice. The sauce here is amazing. My only issue was the raw veggies which I went ahead to cook because I had a part of it raw and honestly didn’t enjoy it at all. I’ve always liked my vegetables cooked so that is honestly a personal preference.

Chicken Yakitori
with roasted carrots, chinese broccoli & miso butter

The repeat here is this chicken yakitori which still remains as delicious as what I remember. On top of that, I always forget to do it for the Battle of Ingredients but the recipe calls for roasting chinese broccoli in the oven and the leaves turns out like making kale chips. It comes out some delicious flavors and its mostly seasons with salt and pepper which is all very awesome. Plus, Jasmine rice is my favorite variety of rice so everything here really justifies why I like this meal a lot and enjoy making it also.

Paprika-Garlic Chicken Sandwiches on Pretzel Buns
with horseradish mayonnaise & green salad

The husband took care of this meal and the next. Its been a crazy week for us so these meals had a lot of it just being myself eating it and him only tasting it. I’m not going to lie that I ended up skipping most of the salad because of the horseradish. They gave a warning of the spiciness of it and washing hands afterwards. Luckily, my husband put together only a little bit of horseradish so it worked really well without burning my mouth. The chicken spicing with the paprika and garlic is really delicious. I’m adding this recipe to my chicken burgers ideas whenever we ever think about it and want to change up from beef.

Pork Meatballs & Roasted Vegetables
with wild jungle peanuts & lemon balm couscous

Finally, we wrap up with the pork meatballs and roasted vegetables on couscous. I have to say that the entire meal here is pretty well balanced. The tomatoes add a more acidic taste as tomatoes usually do with their more sour flavor but it works to give a lot of balance with the other vegetables added in here. The highlight here is the wild jungle peanuts which are specially picked from some region (Amazon, maybe? I can’t remember…) but taste pretty much like a peanut. The couscous is my issue as I had to pick out  the lemon balm because it was just too much in it and was so strong. Other than that, this was a pretty decent meal. I just need to remember to cut the onions into smaller pieces so the meatballs don’t have such coarse onions, making it stand out a ton. However, the spices are quite delish.

Overall, this was a pretty decent box. I liked everything fairly well. There were some issues here and there that makes me say that I love it with the obvious exception of the Chicken Yakitori. One more box next week and then we made the decision to drop the meal boxes to monthly basis for a while so we clear up some of our frozen meats in the freezer and eat some garden veggies from our garden and my mom’s garden, which she’s been sharing with us.

Goodfood Recap#16

Last week’s Goodfood box was quite a few cool menus and the first time we went with a repeat. We actually love the menu so much that we forgot to take the picture again before chomping it all down. Either way, we took the picture from the last time we cooked  the meal. We will talk more about it.

Let’s check out last week’s meals!

Marinated Salmon & Noodle Stir-fry
with Yuzu Sauce, Baby Bok Choy & Snow Peas

We always opt for fish dishes when we can since fish in general is so expensive to buy. This one turned it pretty well. Its a stir-fry so already guaranteed to be pretty simple to put together. The preparation wasn’t too long either and it was just a bit stir together in the pan when all the elements were done. We always love the added sesame seeds to a dish. It adds a nice little bit texture to the dish. I can’t say I love this recipe but it definitely wins on being easy to put together. Its always great to learn what ingredients to put together a nice little stir-fry and this one is a solid choice (especially since there was recently a sale on salmon and we have some frozen and to be eaten soon).

Ancho Chicken Taco
with Beet-Cabbage Slaw & Toasted Pepitas

My husband apparently doesn’t know how to put together a taco and assembled a quesadilla resemblance thing here and ate it like a sandwich. I only took a bite from this meal since I had some other food that I needed to eat but from the bite, its a pretty decent meal even if its not wrapped into a taco style. Its fairly simple to put in and didn’t take too much time. I’m not sure about the ancho part of the thing though but thats just my personal preference. My husband absolutely loved it.

Grilled Ratatouille Sandwich
with Sundried Tomato Hummus

The repeat meal of our box goes to this fantastically delicious vegetarian sandwich called the Grilled Ratatouille Sandwich. Its packed with flavors from the sweet peppers to the tangy cherry tomatoes and then rounded off with a sundried tomato hummus. Its really a lovely sandwich. The last time was actually my husband who put together a lot of it and this time, I took my shot at it until I went to toast the buns and then burnt them a little. Still, its one that I’d definitely make again. Its truly fantastically delicious!

Peanut Butter Dumplings
with Sesame Green Beans

The recipe says that I wasn’t supposed to fold the dumplings this way but this is the way I know how to fold them since I was little so I kept to my own methods. My husband did the cooking and didn’t read the instructions very well for the dumplings so ended up pan-frying all sides when it was supposed to fry at the bottom then steam in the pan to cook the dumpling wrapper. Either way, it still tasted really great. Other than the vegetarian filling taste really awesome, the peanut butter sauce was super delicious. We actually loved it so much that we kept the leftover and cooked some veggies with it the next day and it turned out really well since the peanut butter dissolves pretty much but the taste retains itself. I loved this one a lot.

Overall, this box turned out very good. Two vegetarian meals and both of them were my faves in this box.

Recap: Goodfood #4

I had to take a break this weekend. Sorry about that. For many reasons, it was one I had wanted to focus on real life things. Happy stuff! Plus, it was super humid and hot so being in the office was like sitting in a preheating oven. Regardless, we stayed in mostly and did a lot of gaminh and cooking. Thanks to finishing up the last two meals from last week’s Goodfood box.

Lets check it out!

Seared Haddock with Farro and Orange-Fennel Salad

A lot of new or ingredients we rarely use for this recipe. Haddock isn’t our usual choice of fish. And the fish part of this was tasty. Farro was new to us and its pretty much like a harder texture of brown rice ( or maybe it is brown rice…I should research it further). I’m not a hard rice sort of fan unless its in sweet congee. I didn’t eat the orange fennel salad mostly because of the not eating raw veggies thing but my husband did and his words, it was okay.

Grilled Ratatouille Sandwich with Sundried Tomato Hummus

Easily one of our favorite meals from this box. Its also vegetarian so thats saying a lot. Its juicy. The bread is made with a crispy outer crunch and the veggies, peppers, zucchini and multicolor chery tomatoes had a nice balanced flavor. You can make this for a fancy bbq sandwich idea if you’d like plus, the sundried tomato hummus was absolutely heavenly. Yummy!

Chinese Five Spice Chicken with Snow Pea Tips, Beans and Quinoa Salad

I’ve had five spices flavored stuff when I went to Hong Kong however, since my mom’s not much for spicing up food too much, I’ve never had much exposure. With that said, trying out five spices, it being a chicken dish and the fact that it had snow pea tips (which is one of my ultimate favorite veggies) made this one so awesome. However, we did make a little twist to this and cooked the snow pea tips as well with all the ingredients that would have gone in the salad which actually ended up fantastic. I’d do this one again any day. Now to figure out where to find five spices in the Chinese supermarket nearby. 😉

Chef Jonathan Garnier’s Fresh Tagliatelle with Lebanese Moussaka

Definitely an interesting choice here. We’re big fans of fresh pasta. I’d like to say that we’ve actually been buying fresh pasta options more than the dry ones. We also don’t eat chickpeas or eggplants a lot either but this one had some nice spices. Not to mention my husband did a fine job of putting it together. Not sure what Lebanese Moussaka was before. In fact, I’ve never heard of it before and it was pretty good. Definitely a nice way to incorporate chickpeas and eggplants into everyday meals.

That’s it for this Goodfood recap!
It was a success with 3 meals that we absolutely loved and one that we liked well enough.

Recap: Goodfood #3

Welcome back to the next Goodfoods recap!

We are trying out this new eating healthier and more balanced thing so Goodfoods is a nice step in that which means also that we’re trying to order twice a month if the menus work to our taste. We aren’t sponsored so we just do these as we see fit. Regardless, Goodfoods has been a great addition to our lives. We’re starting to see what weeks it works best in our routine. Plus, the different recipes make for some delicious culinary adventures.

In this third box, everything came well. The box was less dented than last time but still a little scarred from the journey. I still say that they need to find a better, at least more careful courrier company to take care of these deliveries. So far, nothing damaging has occurred with the food so I’m still okay with it.

We’re all hear to check out the food and here it is!

Vegetarian Paella with Grilled Portobello Mushrooms

Vegetarian Paella

The first meal we did was the vegetarian selection, Vegetarian Paella with Grilled Portobello Mushroom. I love portobello mushrooms and the Spanish spices used for this dish is awesome. I’d have to say that this is my favorite out of this box. It did however (somehow) take longer to make than I expected. I’m still not quite a fan of making rice in a pot. Being Chinese, making rice in the rice cooker is how I’m used to. This was a true collaboration between me and my husband as I had the rice ready and he wrapped up by making the portobello mushrooms to add in. There’s a little bit of heat and there’s a nice balance of rice and veggies. The portobellos had a beautiful texture. I really like this one a ton.

Blackened Haddock with Herbed Rice & All Dressed Corn

Blackened Haddock with Herbed Rice & All-Dressed Corn

Kudos to my husband to taking care of this one. We modified this one and removed the cheese that was supposed to be on the corn. I can’t remember if there was yogurt somewhere else also in the sauce but if there was, my husband took it out also. This one was okay. Nothing really spectacular. It was still very tasty. The seasoned corn was the highlight for myself. The fish was good and the herbed rice was interesting.

Pulled BBQ Chicken Sandwiches in Pretzel Buns with Broccoli Salad

Pulled BBQ Chicken Sandwich

My husband’s winner in this box was this sandwich. The chicken was really delicious especially with the barbecue sauce. The broccoli was a nice addition. Looking back at the picture, the broccoli was supposed to be added to the sandwich but we left it on the side. I actually even had extra chicken to eat. The pretzel bun is also a lovely touch.

Mazemen Pork Ramen with Grilled Carrots & Yu Choy

Mazemen Ramen with Grilled Carrots and Yu Choy

With the increasing love for ramen, it was inevitable that it would reach one of these boxes as well. Unfortunately, this meal had to be modified as we were so busy that we waited for too long and the pork had expired so we went the vegetarian route here. However, the taste here is really amazing. The veggies they use are great. I like Yu Choy a lot and particularly the multicolor nantes carrots are also something I personally love to use all the time also. They use a Japanese spice blend which is rather unique. It added some heat but never too overpowering.

Overall, this box was a win. The haddock was not a fave but it still turned out well.
We can’t wait for the next subscription box. Coincidentally, the menu in 2 weeks looks fantastic.