Roasted Red Pepper Pasta

Food Prep and Cooking

Nick:

Not too tough, but a bit unusual; we made the pasta in a pot, made the sauce in a sauce pan, then poured the cooked pasta into the sauce pan, cooked it a little more and spooned it into the bowls we were going to eat out of. Also, this is the first time I'm eating a caper. We left out the broccoli, because who puts frickin' broccoli in a pasta dish? Clearly wrong. Sick and wrong. Sick, sad and wrong. 

Katie:

I don't mind broccoli in a stir fry or something savory but it's wrong in pasta. The tiny trees do not go well with pasta sauce at all. Anyway, prep. It was pretty straight forward. We have started tasting the optional spicy ingredients to see how spice we want our sauce (spoilers: not very spice). 

Post-meal Thoughts

Nick:

Very good! This is another dish that has you spice to taste, and with just a tiny bit of chili paste in it, this packed a bit of a kick (probably also because of all the garlic). However, the milk and butter kept it under control, and the milk, butter, garlic and roasted red pepper all worked great together. The only thing I didn't like was the capers, which tasted VERY strong; I ended up picking mine out after biting into one and getting a salt caper explosion in my mouth I did not enjoy. I'm not going to complain about not getting enough food since we deep-sixed the broccoli, so I'll just say I would happily have eaten twice as much as this. If every box meal turned out this well I'd be very pleased. Nice job, Blue Apron, you can continue existing. 

Katie:

I had the ricotta mixture on mine since Nick wasn't a fan and that cut down on the spice for me. I thought this was great! I'd been looking forward to having this dish all week and was not disappointed. As Nick said, I could have happily eaten twice as much. The pasta choice was perfect, the shells held the more liquid than solid sauce instead and ensured each bite packed the red pepper flavor. I found myself eating as slow as I could to savor it and spend as much time enjoying it as I possibly could. I really hope this comes up in the rotation again. 

I don't know how many of you are familiar with how these meal boxes work. The two we've tried work like this: 

1. When setting up your sub, pick how many meals you want a week (2, 3, 4, etc.) and pick how many people you are cooking for (2 or 4). 
2. You might also have options for meat-based or plant-based or carb conscious, depending on the service
3. Next is picking your meals by the week. You can pick several weeks out.
4. Each week, there are a finite number of meals on offer. With Green Chef, we had to pick 3 each time. With Blue Apron, we could pick 3 or opt for just 2 if we didn't see 3 we wanted. Both let you skip a week with no charge.
5. Both preselect some meals for you they think you might like. You can swap anything out for another meal on offer that week.
6. When your box arrives (you can choose which day of the week), it arrives in a big box with 2 super cold gel ice packs underneath. We have not had issues with heat but it's also still spring here so not very warm.
7. From there, you put the bag(s) in the fridge until you want to eat and the recipe cards on your table (or wherever). Green Chef puts each meal in its own paper bag. Blue Apron has everything in a big insulated bag.