I just bought Thug Kitchen Party Grub this weekend when a friend told me it was only $1.99 on Kindle!! Yus! Straight away this recipe popped out at me as something I wanted to try - not sure why, it just did!
For me it was reasonably spendy, with artichoke hearts, a whole tub of silken tofu and fresh basil but I realllly wanted to try it. To counteract the spendyness it does make a lot - for us we got 6 BIG portions out of it (I think the recipe says 8, but we didn't serve it with any sides).
The recipe does use a lot of pans and takes quite a bit of time, but a lot of that time is passive whilst it bakes and it was actually pretty easy to make. This was including the Blender Marinara (another recipe in this book).
I had a portion the first night and was really underwhelmed by it and found it bland. It maybe needed more salt, which is something I didn't expect as I usually find recipes in American cookbooks to be overly salty. I think some of this was the fact that the marinara sauce was pretty basic and just tomatoes and a few herbs. I added way less nooch as it hurts Niall's stomach, so that could have been an issue too. I was also disappointed that I couldn't tell that there was expensive artichoke hearts in there!
After being underwhelmed we had some leftovers tonight for dinner and it was much better! I did add a bit of homemade aquafaba mozzarella to the top of my portion but that's a little bland too so I'm not sure if that was entirely responsible for it being much better. I think maybe the day sitting meant the flavours melded together more. However, for the time and cost I don't think the improvement the day after making justified it all.
Final verdict: an ok dish but one I won't bother making again
Final score: 2 out of 5 (a pretty average dish losing half a point for not showing off the artichoke hearts)
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