For the third and final delivery from Blue Apron, I had the Stewed Mushrooms with Creamy Goat Cheese Polenta & Fresh Herb Salad. Unfortunately, this was one of the biggest disappointments out of the entire experience. I didn’t understand what happened but this dish just did not come together for me.

I started out by boiling the polenta. This did not look appetizing. It didn’t really taste appetizing either.

Once I got that on the stove, I cut up the mushrooms. My mushrooms were on the verge of going bad so they had a little funk to them but I was able to save most of them. I chopped up the garlic and prepped my parsley, chervil and chives.

By the time the prep was complete, the polenta was ready for the butter and the goat cheese. I only used half of the goat cheese and butter as the remaining half was to be used for the stewed mushrooms. My family is a huge fan of polenta but this polenta just did not do it for me. It was very gritty and even with the goat cheese and butter it was so bland.

So gritty.

Next I started to cook up the mushrooms. My only complaint is that once the mushrooms cooked down, it did not seem like there were very many mushrooms.

While those bad boys were cooking, I got the herb salad started. It was basically roughly chopped parsley, chervil and chives tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper. It was nothing on its own but added a good flavor to the overall dish.

After the mushrooms cooked for a bit, I threw in some garlic. In the future, I would add the garlic from the beginning.

Once they had cooked with the garlic, I added the remaining goat cheese and butter. I guess this is where the mushrooms “stewed.”

At this point I thought, well even if the polenta tasted crappy, I would at least get to taste these wonderful mushrooms.

I am not sure why this didn’t work but it didn’t.  The mushrooms were overpowered by the goat cheese and the polenta was just bland. I expected so much flavor but it just did not come together for me.

 

It looked so good. So disappointing.

Overall Ratings:

Ease of Recipe: 4 out of 5 stars. The dish was easy enough, really just two parts. I took a point off because the cutting the mushrooms was a pain.

Precision of the Recipe: 4 out of 5 stars. This recipe was actually cooked perfectly. It was pretty quick since the prep happened while the polenta was on the stove and it didn’t take long to heat the mushrooms up.

Taste of Recipe: 1 out of 5 stars. The polenta clashed with the mushrooms. It was the grittiness. Way too gritty. It would have needed a whole portion of cheese and butter to itself to even resemble creaminess.

Quality of Ingredients: 2 out of 5. The greens were a little young, as you can see from the pics they were yellow. The real failure was the mushrooms. The funk was almost unbearable, I had to rinse them numerous times. Also–some of the mushrooms were bad. I only had to throw away a few but I imagine if I had waited any longer to cook this dish, more would have been lost.

Final Verdict: One out of Five stars.

 

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own. This post is not sponsored by Blue Apron and I did not receive anything in exchange for this review.