I procrastinate on just about everything, and this includes eating. Especially if I have to make it myself. Although my undomestic self is completely adverse to spending time in the kitchen, my boyfriend managed to convince me to try out Chef’s Plate with him, a subscription service that delivers fresh ingredients to your door every week, complete with recipes.
We’ve had fun trying out the service and also cooking together. One of the dishes we had was “Homemade Ricotta Gnocchi with sautéed leeks and spinach in lemon butter sauce”, something I would never be caught ordering at a restaurant. One, it has no meat in it, and two, it just doesn’t sound very good to my picky taste buds.
While the meal turned out to be okay, the actual cooking was a lot of fun. It was the hardest thing we’ve had to make out of all six meals, as we had to make the actual gnocchi ourselves from scratch. We had to do gross things like removing excess moisture from the Ricotta cheese and mixing and kneading it in with flour. Before that, I have never kneaded anything in my life, so it made for a new experience.
Unfortunately we didn’t do it quite right. The gnocchi, while fresh, could’ve been cooked further. I put in too much lemon juice for the leeks so it was a bit sour. And because there was no meat, we were both hungry within a couple of hours.
If you’ve always struggled with cooking, you can consider giving Chef’s Plate a try. Their weekly menus have vegetarian options and a wide range of flavours. Everything comes in their exact proportions so there’s minimal measuring. Sometimes it’s got weird stuff in there like goat cheese cherry salads, but then again some people might be all about that stuff.
My favourite part by far is the packaging it comes in – not how excessive it is, but how beautiful it is. The company really does a good job of making you feel special. I’ve had to cancel a delivery once (3 days after the deadline) and they gave me no trouble and no attitude with cancelling – even though the package was already ready to be shipped.
And you might actually encounter very interesting foods. For one, one of our meals called for Broccolini®, which is actually not the same thing as baby broccoli. If you are at a point in your life where you need to fall in love with cooking even just a little bit so you can stop eating garbage or spending your life savings eating out, Chef’s Plate is a good option.
Fun fact: Broccolini® is a hybrid of broccoli and kai-lan, and also a registered trademark of Mann Packing Company, Inc.
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