Today I ventured down to a new spot on Fifth Ave in Park Slope: “Get Fresh.” Like many of the DIY, Ready-to-Cook meal joints opening up all over the country right now, Get Fresh is purely takeout, that requires preparation at home. The meals can be frozen for up to a week, or refrigerated for consumption within 1-3 days. The open, peaceful atmosphere conjures up visions of a modern farmhouse kitchen, with traditional touches like the original hardwood floors and tin ceilings, mixed with modern stainless steel industrial cookware and contemporary light fixtures. Geared towards busy Park Slope parents, it wasn’t surprising to hear a Pink Martini album playing in the background.
In an open dairy case lining one side of the retail area, plastic containers (that I was told are recycled, as well as recyclable) hold neatly packed meals and their accoutrements. Among them I spotted Morrocan lamb tangine, red wine-braised short ribs with vegetables, spinach lasagne and Mac ‘n Cheese (classed up with Gruyere instead of traditional chedder). The soup selection was also impressive, including chicken with potatoes and escarole, white bean with garlic and rosemary, curried carrot soup with coconut milk and lime, and black bean. The chef was just finishing up a big pot of classic tuscan vegetable bean soup, which everyone in the store was able to sample. It was very delicious, though not very salty. I like my soups (and everything else) with tons of salt, but I was informed that all of the meals and meal-kits are prepared with a very low amount of salt, at a “healthy amount,” and patrons are encouraged to add their own seasoning if they like. I guess it’s better to under-salt, than to over-salt!
In speaking with the owner, I found out that Get Fresh will soon be carrying ready-to-eat “lunch boxes,” which can be pre-paid by parents and picked up by the kids while on their lunch breaks at school. Baby food is also in the works.
At $18-$30 for the 3-serving packages, about $10 for the single-serving meals, and $4.50 for the small soups, Get Fresh is on the pricier side of takeout, but the cheaper side of actually buying ingredients to cook it yourself. So often I buy armfuls of fresh ingredients for one or two meals that can be made several times from the amount of each ingredient, and before I barely get one meal out the ingredients have already gone bad.
Get Fresh opened at the end of November, and gets all of their ingredients from local farms, including Dines Farm, Satur Farms, Flying Pigs Farm and Hawthorne Valley Farm. The current menu has just evolved into a winter menu, and though some things continue to change monthly, the selection will mainly change seasonally (which makes sense, when you get your ingredients from farms!).
And now, for the test!!!!!
I selected the pumpkin ravioli (one of my favorite dishes) and rushed home to prepare it. The ingredients (pictured below) were packed very neatly. I’ve always liked kits, and individually wrapped pieces. The ravioli kit comes with swiss chard, balsamic vinegar, pine nuts, pumpkin ravioli, and butter! Everything pre-measured, all the prep work done for you. Seems easy enough.
The cooking instructions are on the bottom of the container, which I actually found a little difficult. The plastic didn’t want to stay closed, so my directions kept popping over and wiggling away from me. A little thing, I know, but still a thing, so there it is!
The instructions called for the ravioli to be strained, placed in another dish, and the pot returned to the heat for the butter and pine nuts. Since I’ve worked on a few recipes, I can tell you a few things missing from this. Here is what they tell you to do: “Drain and set aside. Return pot to heat and add pine nuts and butter.” When writing a recipe, you always assume the person reading it knows nothing, aka the Lowest Common Denominator. So if I didn’t know anything about cooking, I would “drain and set aside” the pasta, but what about the water? I might keep the water in the pot, and return that to the heat, in which case my butter, pine nuts, etc. would be very soggy and disappointing. Again, something small, but important. The wording should probably read “Return empty pot to heat and add pine nuts and butter.”
Okay– and this is kind of a big one– when I returned my (empty) pot to the heat and added the butter, the pot was much too hot and the butter and pine nuts burned slightly. Maybe something should be said to use a different burner and a lower heat setting? Also, my pot wasn’t entirely dry (my fault, but something that most people might also not take into consdieration) and thus the water droplets caused the butter to spatter (which can lead to little tiny droplet burns. Just look at my forearms…there are definitely a few battle scars from my early cooking adventures back in high school). Again, it’s something that some people might know, but that most people don’t know.
So once I got my (slightly burned) pine nuts, swiss chard, balsamic and ravioli into my bowl, everything looked and smelled beautiful. I ripped open my little bag of parmigianno reggiano cheese and sprinkled plenty on top of my ravioli (I love parmigianno reggiano. I put it on everything. It is also a very fun cheese to pronounce. Like gruyere. Sometimes you can bring up the subject of cheeses, just so you have an opportunity to say these very fun cheese names.)
The taste was… amazing! Very very good pumpkin ravioli. Sometimes it is paired with a too-sweet sauce or a creamy, overly flavorful sauce that detracts from the pumpkin flavor. The best pumpkin ravioli I ever had was in a yellow squash puree sauce, which was amazing, and I have never been able to quite reproduce the same taste. But this was good too- nice and light. I never had pasta in balsamic, always olive oil or heavy sauce. It was an interesting (not to tart) taste.
I actually thought the portion was more than generous; I didn’t finish it. The greatest and most thoughtful aspect, in my opinion, was the amount of parmegianno reggiano cheese they gave me! I, Dana Dishes, actually had parmegianno reggiano cheese left over!!!! I know. Amazing.
All in all, a wonderful (but pricey) experience. For the moderately skilled cook with better-than-average knowledge, the meals were in fact quick and easy to prepare. I think with a little tweaking of the recipes, I can fully recommend Get Fresh.
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