Jeez, I'm somewhat used to John's culinary abominations, but how can he look at the nightmare he unleashed on the world, compare it to the picture in the kit, and think, "hm, yes, this is exactly the same and something that needs to be shown off to the masses"? Jack Scalfani isn't someone you want to be emulating, John.
Mistakes I notice when compared to the recipe:
- Minor nitpick, but the directions call for shaving the carrot with a peeler to create longer, thicker ribbons for the salad, while John looks like he ran it through a grater instead. I think I see a food processor in the background, so he might have used that. Doesn't really affect much, could come down to personal preference, but I imagine John was probably just being lazy and shoved it in the processor because it's a gadget and it means less work (though more cleanup).
- Speaking of lazy, there's a fucking Slap Chop (or equivalent) right there in the middle of the picture. Now, I won't be a snob and say that only plebs use them and a real chef wouldn't be caught dead with one, but I've never really understood the point. Learning how to properly chop ingredients is a valuable skill, and it only dirties a knife that's easy to clean. Gadgets like this need to be disassembled, each part washed individually, and then reassembled for storage. Just use a knife!
- The recipe says that the salad has mixed greens, but John's looks like it just has spinach in it. Don't know whether to blame Hello Fresh for sending the wrong thing (or whatever they had in stock) or John for throwing it out and putting something else in.
- The onions...dear God, the onions. The only good I can say is that they're sliced relatively thin, but I see zero caramelizing going on there. The sauce looks oily and thin, but also clumpy somehow, and there's far too much of it for the chicken. I honestly didn't even notice the chicken the first time I looked at the image, I thought it was a vegetarian meal. Considering that the meal kit has instructions for two or four servings, I wonder if John added double what he needed to.
- Again, I'm no snob, and I generally don't care about presentation with my food. Taste is more important to me, and if a finished dish doesn't quite come out the way it should look, but it still tastes good, then I call it a win. That said, everything on John's plates is just haphazardly thrown together and makes it look remarkably unappetizing. The salad is spilling over the sides, the walnuts and parsley are clumped together instead of sprinkled throughout, and the less said about the onions (dear God, the onions), the better.
Now, I'm no genius chef myself, and I'm never hard on an amateur cook that's actively trying to improve. Hell, I won't even begrudge people for using meal kits, because at least you're still trying to cook something yourself (though you're gonna save a lot of money in the long run by learning to shop). But John acting like he's some hot-shot master chef when he can't even do a meal kit properly is just pathetic. That he's actually
proud of his efforts and wants to show them off to the world shows just how delusional he is about his abilities, but that's par for the course, really.
