Cookistry

Shrimp scampi. What's not to love? Butter, garlic, seafood ... yum!

For some reason, I don't make it very often, but when I saw a recipe in Gumbo Love by Lucy Buffet, I had to give it a try.

Of course, I switched up a few things. Fresh shrimp really doesn't exist here, but I buy it frozen when it looks good. I happened to have a bag of cooked, peeled shrimp in the freezer, so I used that. The recipe actually called for raw shrimp, but I knew I could make it work.

Gumbo Love is another one of the books that's getting passed around in the group I belong to. I also made a pound cake from the book that I thought was almost perfect. The texture was good - which is really amazing up here at high altitude - but I thought it was just slightly too sweet for my taste. But that's okay. I'll probably made it again and adjust the sugar level down and see if the texture remains the same.

I also made a black bean and corn salad from the book. Most of the time, I just toss things together for a salad like that, but this time I (mostly) followed the recipe.

The scampi, though ... I really need to keep this recipe. Thus, a blog post.

Shrimp Scampi
Adapted from Gumbo Love by Lucy Buffet

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 pounds peeled and deveined shrimp (The book specifies wild-caught gulf shrimp, but here in Colorado, sometimes you take what you can get. I used cooked frozen peeled shrimp.)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup finely chopped shallots (I used onion instead.)
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
1/2 cup white wine
Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I just eyeballed it when I shook it on.)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, divided (I just eyeballed it.)
2 cups white rice, for serving (I use rice that had been cooked with saffron, so it was yellow.)

In a large heavy skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat.

While the oil is heating, season the shrimp with just a little of the salt and pepper. Add the shrimp to the skillet and saute for 3 minutes, then remove the shrimp and set aside. (Since my shrimp were pre-cooked, I skipped all of this.

Add the butter to the skillet and allow it to melt, but be careful that it doesn't burn. Add the shallot and garlic (here's where I added salt and pepper) and saute until they start to caramelize.

Add the wine to deglaze the pan, scraping up any gooey bits stuck to the pan and stirring them into the wine. Add the lemon juice, red pepper flakes, and the remaining salt and pepper. Cook for a minute or two, or until the liquid has reduced by a third.

Return the shrimp to the pan (here's where mine entered for the first time) and cook until the shrimp is cooked through (or warmed through, if they're precooked).

Turn off the heat, add 1 tablespoon of the parsley, and stir well.

Serve the shrimp over the rice and garnish with the remaining parsley.

Oh, look, another sous vide post.

Don't worry. It's not going to be all sous vide all the time. But I'm working my way through sous vide cookbooks, looking for the one that will be my go-to book. This time, the book is The Essential Sous Vide Cookbook by Sarah James. I bought this one because the author had a pretty good track record working for Instructables.

Raw, shell-on shrimp were on sale at my local grocery store, so I bought 2 pounds, then I decided to see if the book had any sous vide recipes. Yup. There was a very simple recipe, which was exactly what I was looking for. With sous vide recipes, my first concern is whether the cooking time and temperature will work. If that doesn't work, the rest of the recipe doesn't matter.

Shrimp is a good candidate for sous vide cooking since shrimp go from undercooked to overcooked in the blink of an eye. Overcooked shrimp are the most likely result because if you cook them until they're done, the carryover heat takes care of the overcooking. And then they're kind of tough and rubbery.

The instructions were simply. Put the cleaned peeled shrimp into a sous vide bag with a little bit of olive oil or butter so they'll fit in a single layer. I used butter.


Then, cook at 130 degrees for 15 minutes, drop the bag into cold water to begin the cooling process, then refrigerate. Then the shrimp can be used in salads, with cocktail sauce, or however you want to serve them. The interesting thing was that two recipes where the shrimp was served hot used a temperature of 135 degrees for 30 minutes, with no interim chilling.

But for chilled shrimp, I'm going to say this time and temperature was really nice. I also tossed some into hot leftover fried rice, and the were perfect for that, too.

Sous Vide Shrimp
Adapted from The Essential Sous Vide Cookbook by Sarah James

1-2 pounds of raw, peeled, cleaned shrimp
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter

Heat the water to 130 degrees.

Place the shrimp and butter into a sous vide bag so they'll fit in a single layer.

Put the bag into the sous vide water and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the bag from the water and place it in cold water to start the chilling process, then refrigerate until fully chilled.

Serve cold in salad, with cocktail sauce, or however you like. I even stirred them into some leftover vegetable stir-fried rice that I had left over. So yum!

Super-Quick Cocktail Sauce

This is pretty much the only cocktail sauce I ever had when I was a kid. We always used a brand-name chili sauce to make the sauce, but the folks at Kam's Kettle Cooked sent me some of their mild-flavored sauce as a sample(they make both mild and hot), so I used that instead. Their sauce has a slightly spicier flavor which worked perfectly well for my cocktail sauce.


To make the cocktail sauce, just mix chili sauce with jarred horseradish - whatever proportion you like. As horseradish sits around, it loses strength, so if you have a fresh jar, you might just need a tiny bit. If the jar has been hanging around a while, it will take more to get the same kick. If the jar has been around for a long time, it might have no life left, so it's time to buy a new jar.

If you make too much cocktail sauce for the amount of shrimp you have, mix it with some mayonnaise and a little bit of chopped sweet pickle or sweet pickle relish to make Thousand Island salad dressing.


About the cookbook: I've only made this one recipe from this book, so I can't really draw an opinion yet. I'll be making more recipes soon. The book was NOT free from the publisher. I bought this one.

And here's a bonus for you. Download the Shrimp Fried Rice photo as a coloring book page. It's free. No obligation, no need to sign up for anything. Here's my artwork:

All the cool kids are spiralizing these days. Are you?

This post is sponsored by OXO and their new hand-crank spiralizer, which they sent me so I could use it for this post.

Like most OXO tools, this one is thoughtfully made, with blades that store in an included box - and then the box attaches to the spiralizer, so it all stays together in storage.

That's a huge plus when it comes to kitchen gadgets with multiple parts. I have a neat little collection of things that belong to other things.

But this particular collection is special. I know the parts all belong with ... something. But I don't quite know what that something is. Sooner or later, I'll find the mating parts, but until then, I let them rattle around in a drawer.

So anyway, the OXO spiralizer keeps its parts together. It includes three blades - one for larger spiralized cuts, one for smaller cuts, and a slicing blade.


For this recipe, I used the two different spiralizer blades - the larger one for the onion and fennel - and the smaller one for the zucchini.

And yes, you can use the spiralizer to cut things that aren't solid all the way through, like the onion in this recipe. The fennel and onion didn't actually result in long ribbons, but they cut nice thins trips that were exactly what I wanted.


So, if you haven't spiralized, the absolutely best tip I can give you is that if you're cutting something like zucchini, it's really cool to end up with a few super-long noodles. But ... those super-long noodles aren't so fun to eat. It's better to cut the noodles in lengths similar to spaghetti, or even a little shorter. The easy way to do that is to stop the spiralizing once in a while and just snip the strands with scissors.

I used langostino tails for this recipe, but if you can't find them, shrimp would be just as good. you can use fresh, cooked, or raw - just make sure your remove the shells and they're deveined.


Lemony Spiralized Vegetables with Langostino Tails

1 medium onion
1 medium fennel bulb (Reserve some of the frilly fronds for garnish; discard the green stalks)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 green bell pepper
2 zucchini (not the teeny ones, but not the ones that your friends and enemies drop off on your porch in the summer)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Pinch of red pepper flakes
12 ounces langostino tails (or shrimp)
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley and thyme (about half of each - eyeball it)

Use the larger spiralizer blade to cut the onion and the bulb of the fennel into strips. Reserve some of the fine fennel fronds for garnish.

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan on medium heat and add the onion and fennel. Add the salt an pepper and stir. Cook, stirring once in a while. Meanwhile, core and seed the bell pepper and slice it into thin strips. Add it to the pan.

Continue cooking the vegetables in the pan while you spiralize the zucchini.

When the onions have softened and are no longer sharp-tasting, add the zucchini, lemon juice, and red pepper flakes. Cook, stirring as needed, until the zucchini is cooked through.

Add the langostino tails (or shrimp) and cook just long enough to warm the seafood (if it's precooked) or to cook it through if it's raw.

If the seafood gives off a lot of liquid, turn up the heat briefly to reduce it.

Add the butter and continue cooking, stirring, until the butter has melted. Taste for seasoning and add more salt, pepper, or lemon, if desired. Add the herbs, stir once more, serve. Garnish with some of the reserved fennel fronds, if desired.


This post was sponsored by OXO. Want to know what they're up to? Follow them on Facebook!

A while back, a company called Safe Catch sent me some lovely cans of tuna.

Have I ever mentioned that when I was a kid, I didn't know that tuna could come in any form except cans? I mean, I knew what fish was. We went fishing and ate what we caught. But the little mom-and-pop grocery store where my mom shopped didn't have fresh tuna.

Or, if I'm being honest, they didn't have any fresh fish at all. There might have been some breaded fish filets in the freezer case, but nothing as exotic as tuna. Or salmon. Or pretty much anything except cod.

These days, I can appreciate a nice tuna tartare or a seared raw tuna., but I still like canned tuna for tuna salad or for a tuna casserole. Because, seriously, tuna casserole is pure comfort food.

Not Your Mom's Tuna Casserole

4 tablespoons butter
1 onion, diced
1 rib celery, diced
1 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 can Safe Catch Tuna
6 ounces egg noodles or your preferred noodle, cooked barely al dente
4 slices muenster cheese

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and have an 8-inch baking dish standing by.

Melt the butter in a skillet and add the onion, celery and mushrooms. Cook until the vegetables are cooked through and all of the liquid exuded from the vegetables has disappeared.

Add the flour and stir. Cook, stirring for a minute or two, then add the milk. Stir to combine, then let it come to a boil, stirring. It will thicken.

Add the tuna and stir to combine. Break up the tuna enough so that it is well distributed, but don't let it break up so much that you no longer have pieces. Fold in the noodles, then mix in the mayonnaise.

Transfer the mixture to an 8-inch square baking dish and top with the cheese.

Place the baking dish in the oven and bake at 350 degrees until the mixture is boiling and the cheese is melted. It's perfectly fine if the cheese browns a little in spots.

Serve warm.

I received product at no cost to me, but I wasn't obligated to write about it. I just happened to be hungry.

When the folks at Sun Basket contacted me and asked if I wanted to try their healthy meal kit service, I said "sure." Right now, I'm only cooking sporadically, so I figured that having pre-measured and pre-planned meals showing up at my door would be a good idea.

All the meals at Sun Basket are categorized for different types of diets - vegetarian, paleo, gluten free, diary free, and soy free. Each week has different selections.

I chose pan-roasted Pacific cod with bell pepper, artichokes, and tomato, which was gluten-free and paleo; turkey burgers with apple-date chutney and spiced rice which was gluten free; and roasted cauliflower gratin with tomato, goat cheese, and arugula, which was vegetarian and gluten free.

My favorite of the three was the cod, and I'm including the recipe here. The turkey burger was interesting. It included grated zucchini in the burger to make it more moist - I thought that was a great idea, and I'll probably do that in the future if I make my own turkey burgers. The apple-date chutney was the perfect companion for it

Cod dinner ingredients

While I liked the flavor of the rice combo, my one quibble was that I thought it would have looked better on the plate if it had been more colorful instead of having three brownish items on the plate. I added some cherry tomatoes to brighten mine up - a pretty easy fix that anyone could do.

The cauliflower gratin was good, but I probably wouldn't make it the same way a second time. There was nothing wrong with it, but just not my favorite way of preparing cauliflower. I'm sure others would love it.

Cauliflower dinner ingredients.

But here's the thing. You can always change the recipes around, if you don't like some part of it. For example, the cauliflower recipe came with arugula to be made into a salad. I'm not fond of arugula, so I gave it to a friend, used some red leaf lettuce to make a salad, and made the dressing from the kit for my salad. Easy peasy.

The meal kits come with a UPS return label so you can return the box and freezer packs to be re-used, so you don't have to worry about properly recycling everything. I really liked that. I'm fine with recycling cardboard, but there's no good way to recycle freezer packs.

Sun Basket box.

If you're looking for healthy and special-diet meal kit options, take a look at Sun Basket. All the ingredients were high quality, they were packed well, and the instructions were good. There are lots of different meal options to choose from each week, so you should be able to find something you like!

If you want to give Sun Basket a try, you can get $30 off your first order just for my readers. See, I like you!

And, one lucky winner can try Sun Basket for FREE. The giveaway widget is after the recipe.

Pan-Roasted Pacific Cod with Bell Pepper, Artichokes, and Tomato
Recipe courtesy of Sun Basket

Since the ingredients were pre-measured, there aren't amounts for all items in the recipe; I estimated the amounts (in parenthesis) or just use your own judgement about how much you like)

2 Pacific cod filets (2 servings)
1 large or 2 small shallots
2 garlic cloves
Red chard (1 bunch)
1 red bell pepper
Artichoke hearts (These weren't fresh; use canned or frozen/thawed. About 1/3 cup, but I'd use more next time since I like artichokes.)
1/4 teaspoon aleppo pepper, optional
Fresh oregano (one sprig is enough)
Diced San Marzano tomatoes (I'd guess about a cup)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Heat the oven to 200 degrees.

Pat the cod filets dry and season on both sides with salt and pepper.

In a nonstick frying pan on medium heat, warm 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil until hot but not smoking. Cook the cod until golden brown, about 5 minutes on each side. Transfer the cod to a sheet pan and keep it warm in the oven while you prepare the rest.

While the cod is cooking, you can prep the vegetables.

Peel and chop the shallots. Chop the garlic. Strip the chard leaves off the stems. Rinse and chop the leaves and stems, keeping them separate. Cut the bell pepper into 1-inch pieces. Discard the seeds and stem.

Rinse the artichoke hearts. Chop the oregano leaves.

In the same pan used to cook the fish, add more oil if the pan seems dry. Warm over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Add the shallots, garlic, chard stems, bell pepper, and aleppo pepper, if you're using it.

Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the shallots and chard are just tender, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the tomato paste and cook until slightly caramelized, about 1 minute. Add the artichoke hearts, tomatoes, oregano, and chard leaves. Season with salt and pepper.

Add 1/2 cup water and cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has been reduced by half, about 5 minutes longer.

Transfer the braised vegetables to individual bowl. Top with the fish and serve.

Sun Basket provided the meal kits to me at no cost; they also are providing the product to the winner and they also supplied the giveaway widget. Giveaway is now over.

Seafood is ideal when you don't have a lot of time to cook. While shrimp isn't the cheapest thing at the store, frozen shrimp is great to have on hand. I buy it when it's on sale and stash it in the freezer for nights when I need a quick dinner.

This dish is not only quick to cook, you can also cook the tomato/vegetable mix ahead of time, and then reheat it and add the shrimp at the last second. Great for nights when you want to have dinner on the table a few minutes after you get home.

The Piment d'Espelette is a special type of paprika that comes from a specific area in France. It has a little bit of heat to it, but not a lot - it's certainly not like cayenne. If you don't have it, regular paprika is fine. Depending on your preference, you can use either sweet or sharp paprika.

You might notice that I used a cooking wine for this. I keep a few bottles on-hand for convenience, because I don't always want to open a bottle of good drinking wine just for a small amount for a recipe. A while back, I did some sponsored posts for Holland House, and I liked the product so much, I continue to buy it.

Because cooking wine has salt in it (to make it unpalatable for drinking, which is why they don't sell it as booze) you may not need to add much salt to recipes where you use it. As always, taste the food when it's nearly done and add salt if you think you need it.



I thought this was particularly good on top of rice or polenta, but you could also serve it as-is, or with pasta.

Shrimp with Marsala and Tomatoes

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, peel and cut into chunks
1/2 orange bell pepper, cored and cut into chunks
1/2 teaspoon Piment d'Espelette (or paprika)
1 14.5-ounce can petite diced tomatoes
1/4 cup marsala cooking wine
Salt and white pepper, to taste
2 pounds peeled raw shrimp (if it's frozen, thaw it)

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan. Add the onion and bell pepper and cook, stirring as needed, until the vegetables are almost cooked through.

Add the tomatoes and continue cooking, stirring as needed, until the liquid is reduced and thickened.

Take the pan off the heat and add the wine (to keep it from flaming). Place it back on the heat and cook for a few more minutes to reduce it again. Add a few grinds of white pepper. Taste for seasoning and add salt, if desired.

Add the shrimp and cook, stirring often, until the shrimp is just opaque.

Serve immediately.

I grew up eating canned tuna, and it was pretty much either a tuna salad sandwich or tuna noodle casserole.

And the tuna in the can was pretty much always the same, too. I don't know if that was because mom purposely bought the same tuna every time, whether all the brands were that similar, or whether there weren't a lot of choices at the time.

So when the folks at Wild Planet Foods offered to send me some of their canned tuna, I was pretty sure I would like it. I didn't dislike the tuna I'd been eating for decades, so I didn't expect this one to be very different.

When I opened the first can from Wild Tuna, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. It looked a whole heck of a lot better than what I was used to.

Since then, I've used a few different cans that I got from Wild Planet - every one they sent was different - and I've liked all of them so far. Because the quality was better than the average canned tuna, I decided that it deserved better treatment in a sandwich.

Instead of making a mixed, mashed and combined tuna salad that was heavy with mayonnaise, I left the tuna in larger chunks, and dressed it lightly with the mayonnaise.

Tuna in the Style of Lobster Roll

1 tablespoon diced onion
2 teaspoons sweet pickle relish or diced sweet pickle
1 large pimento-stuffed green olive, diced
2 tablespoons mayonnaise (or as desired)
1 5-ounce can Wild Planet tuna, drained

Combine the onion, relish, green olive and mayonnaise in a small bowl. Stir to combine. Add the tuna and mix gently to coat the tuna without breaking it up too much.

This makes enough for two hearty sandwiches. Lobster rolls are typically served on hot dog buns, but this is also great on any sandwich bread you like. Lettuce and tomato are nice additions, but it's great without anything added.

This isn't just for sandwiches, though. It would be good as a salad on top of greens, or scooped onto half of an avocado.

About Wild Planet

Mercury is a big concern in tuna, and the folks at Wild Planet have figured out (after a lot of testing) that smaller, younger tuna caught near the surface are safer than larger, older, deep-dwelling tuna - so they've been buying pole- and line-caught younger fish since the company was founded in 2001.

Besides tuna, the company also sells a variety of other seafood in cans, pouches, and jars as well as canned roasted chicken.

For more information, check out Wild Planet Foods online.

I received tuna at no cost to me. I wasn't required to create a recipe.

Roasted salmon, plated.

I've been curious about services like Blue Apron for a while.

If the name doesn't sound familiar, it's a meal service that ships to customers on a weekly basis. But it's not prepared meals. It's all of the fresh ingredients that you need to make the recipes they give you.

A friend of mine described it as something like restaurant take-out, but without getting soggy from sitting in Styrofoam. In other words, really good food, served fresh.

Since ingredients are pre-measured, it's easier than cooking from a cookbook. And there's no need for shopping. The only things you need to supply are salt, pepper, water, and oil. Every other thing was included, from a pat of butter to a small amount of heavy cream, to a handful of olives.

Just like cooking from a cookbook, you need to do some work, and you do need some basic cooking equipment. This isn't dump-and-stir. If there are vegetables to be peeled and chopped, you will peel and chop them. If there's cheese to be grated, you will be grating it.

I ordered a the two-person box, which included three meals (at no cost to me, for reviewing). When ordering, I was asked some basic questions about food preferences. Vegetarian? Fish? I selected the omnivore option, and received one seafood meal, one chicken meal, and one beef meal.

It came in an insulated box with cooling packs, with the really small ingredients in bags to keep them contained.

A box of ingredients.

The instructions suggested that since fish is most perishable, that should be cooked first, so I tackled the Roasted Salmon, Fennel & Castelvetrano Olives with Cara Cara Oranges, Farro, and Salsa Verde. It sounds complicated, but the instructions were pretty simple and there were photos for the steps to make it a little easier.

Recipe cards from Blue Apron

The other two meals we got were Spicy Thai Chicken Noodle Soup with Red Curry and Mushrooms, and Short Rib Burgers on Pretzel Buns with Hoppy Cheddar Sauce and Roasted Sweet Potato Rounds.

The recipe cards are printed on a glossy stock, so if you splash something on them, you can wipe them off. They're not indestructible, but you can have one sitting on the counter, right next to where you're cooking.

My husband and I were really happy with the results of all the meals, and there was plenty of food. The salmon was a reasonable portion, and the vegetables and farro made the salmon meal pretty substantial.

The soup was really filling, and we ended up with sufficient leftovers for a few lunches. We also had some leftovers from the burger dinner. Hungrier folks might have finished it all, but I don't think anyone would consider the portions skimpy.

Here's the salmon recipe, which is also available on the Blue Apron site. The recipes that you see online are formatted just like the recipe cards, complete with photos. Since their recipes seldom repeat, this gives you a chance to try recipes you missed, and you can recreate the ones that you did get, if you happen to lose the recipe cards..

Roasted Salmon, Fennel & Castelvetrano Olives
Recipe courtesy of Blue Apron

Salmon, ready to roast, on a bed of onions, fennel and olives.

2 Skinless Salmon Fillets
2/3 Cup Pearled Farro
1 Fennel Bulb With Fronds
1 Cara Cara Orange
1 Clove Garlic
1 Red Onion
1 Large Bunch Parsley
2 Ounces Castelvetrano Olives
3 Tablespoons Sliced Almonds
1 Tablespoon Capers
1/4 Teaspoon Fennel Pollen

1 Prepare the ingredients:
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Wash and dry the fresh produce. Heat a medium pot of salted water to boiling on high. Remove the salmon from the refrigerator to bring to room temperature. Pick off and reserve some of the fennel fronds; thinly slice the fennel stems and bulb. Using a peeler, remove the rind of the orange, avoiding the pith; mince to get 2 teaspoons of zest (or use a zester). Cut off and discard the remaining orange rind and pith; medium dice the orange. Peel and mince the garlic; smash with the side of your knife until it resembles a paste. Peel and thinly slice the onion. Pick the parsley leaves off the stems; discard the stems and finely chop the leaves. Finely chop the almonds. Roughly chop the capers.

2 Cook the farro:
Add the farro to the pot of boiling water. Cook 15 to 17 minutes, or until tender. Turn off the heat. Drain thoroughly and return to the pot.

3 Roast the salmon, onion, fennel and olives:
While the farro cooks, pat the salmon fillets dry with paper towels; season with salt and pepper on both sides. Place the fennel stems and bulb, onion and olives on a sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper; toss to coat. Arrange in a single, even layer; place the seasoned salmon fillets on top. Roast 16 to 18 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender and the salmon is cooked to your desired degree of doneness.

4 Make the salsa verde:
While the salmon, onion, fennel and olives roast, in a small bowl, combine the garlic paste, parsley, almonds and capers. Stir in enough olive oil to create a rough paste. Season with salt and pepper to taste and set aside.

5 Dress the farro:
Add the orange and orange zest to the pot of cooked farro. Stir in a drizzle of olive oil; season with salt and pepper to taste.

6 Plate your dish:
Divide the dressed farro and roasted onion, fennel and olives between 2 plates. Top each with a roasted salmon fillet and the salsa verde. Garnish with the fennel fronds and fennel pollen. Enjoy!

Looks good, right? It was!

The photo on the recipe card showed the farro on the bottom, fennel on top, and the salmon on top of that. I decided to plate the fennel and onions on one side of the plate, the farro on the other side of the plate, and the fennel on top.

More about the making of the recipes

It's all pretty clear, right? It sounds simple to do, right? So why not just download the recipes and make them?

Here's the deal. Not only don't you need to shop for the normal ingredients, like the salmon and the onion and the parsley, but you also don't need to go hunting for the ingredients that your store might not have.

I'm pretty sure I could find oranges any time of the year, but I don't know if I could find Cara Cara oranges. Farro isn't the easiest thing to find, either. Some specialty stores have it, and you can buy it online. But could you find it tomorrow? Maybe not. Same with fennel pollen. It's not a spice you'd be likely to find at the grocery store. Olives are easy, but do you think you'd find Castelvetrano olives?

All those ingredients help to make these recipes a little more special. If you like them, you can hunt them down later. If you're not crazy about them - well, you only have enough for one meal, so you're not stuck with extras that you don't have any use for.

All of the ingredients for the salmon meal.

And then, if you don't cook all that often, you might not want to buy a whole jar of capers or a bag of almonds. Parsley always comes in a pretty big bunch, but this recipe didn't need nearly that much.

All three of the recipes I tried had at least a few of those specialty ingredients, including the burgers that were made from ground short rib meat, and the cheese sauce that included hops flowers. When was the last time you saw hops flowers at your grocery store?

How much skill does it take to make these recipes?

My husband, who never cooks, volunteered to make one of the recipes. He tackled the Spicy Thai Chicken Noodle Soup. I hovered nearby to answer questions and make sure things didn't go wrong. I mean, there's fire and sharp knifes and heavy cookware to deal with.

Ingredients for Thai Chicken Soup.

He had a few questions, like the best way to peel ginger (use a spoon) and whether his chopped ginger and garlic were minced finely enough (they weren't.)

Slice, slice, chop, chop.

If I wasn't there, I'm sure he would have figured it out on his own. Seriously, if the ginger wasn't minced completely, it would have been fine. When I asked him what he thought, he said, "I could serve this to a date."

Good luck with that, dear.

But his point was that you could serve this to someone you're trying to impress, whether it's a date, your boss, or your in-laws.

But these are still simple fast and easy enough to serve on a normal night. The salmon dish was the fanciest of the three, while the soup was more casual. The burgers were the most casual of the three, but still a step above a standard burger.

So. Let's talk cost.

The three meals for two that I got would cost $59.94, so that's a tiny bit less than $10 per meal per person. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get a restaurant meal for $10 per person.

There are also two family plan options available. They're both for four people, but the difference is the number of meals per week.

Two meals per week for four people is $69.94, while four meals for four people is $139.88 -  that's about $8.74 per person. Pretty reasonable, right?

And now, I have a deal for you.