In a previous post I talked about my initial impressions of the HelloFresh delivery that arrived this week. It’s our first time using such a service so the quality of the produce and the quality of the menu/recipes are equally important in determining if we’ll continue.
The HelloFresh North African Lamb Tagine
Included in “the box” are recipe cards for the ingredients, they’re also available online at their website in PDF format. Our first meal was “the lamb”, chosen for no other reason than the expiry date of the lamb itself was closest.
The recipe looked simple enough and the ingredients far from exotic, but still there’s a comprehensive level of inclusion, things that we’d probably not buy if shopping for this meal ourselves. The small amount of mint to garnish for example, or the slivered almonds, these are things that cannot be bought in such small quantities normally and end up lurking in the panty until cleared out long beyond their sell-by date.
Putting it together
The North African Lamb Tagine is listed by HelloFresh as being one of their more difficult recipes for the week. I suspect this is partially because there’s a few separate cooking activities going on, and because there’s a few more ingredients to bring together with reasonable timings.
It’s still a 1-pan meal though which is a good thing (I’m not counting the use of a bowl for prepping the Couscous)
The instructions are very clear and provide incremental timings for most steps allowing even the most naive kitchen user can get a good result.
It’s not rocket science and once the ingredients are brought together it starts looking like the sample picture on the menu!
Hitting the Plates & How it Tastes
Nestled on the bed of couscous, sprinkled with the garnishes of toasted almonds and chopped mint I’m very impressed with how similar to the sample photos this looks.
While I don’t always go-to-town on presentation when cooking I’m very aware that we eat with our eyes first and putting in some effort does make a massive difference.
At first bit the combination of textures is good, theres still some firmness to the carrot while the lamb is tender. The crunch of the almonds breaks up what could have been a very stew-like meal. Mixing through with the couscous changes the texture again.
The seasoning could have more kick, but reading other reviews online indicate that the Hellofresh team have to be everything to all people and in this case have chosen a good middle ground.
In summary it was a great tasting, filling meal that met with the expectation raised from the AUD11.50 per plate cost.
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