Obviously the answer is no.  You never have to buy anything specific, least alone a snack from a drive through.

I am not a coffee drinker, but I do stop by Starbucks from time to time for a hot chocolate because it’s pretty good.  I’ve also never bought food much at Starbucks, until I was pregnant with my youngest.  Then, inevitably, I was hungry in between the preschool drop off and whatever errand I was running that day.  So, I tried a Cheese & Fruit Bistro Box.  For the uninitiated, this includes apple slices; a mix of dried cranberries and almonds; small chunks of brie, cheddar, and gouda; and some multigrain crackers.  While nothing spectacular, this was all pretty good.  But, one day they were out so I tried the Protein Bistro Box which includes an egg, apple slices, grapes, cheddar cheese, muesli, and honeyed peanut butter.  The egg was a nice addition so that became my go to box.  Though, ideally I’d have the egg, three cheese mix, grapes, and apples.  The other items are not fine, but I ate them because they were there not because they were my favorites (excessive calories are not a problem in our hose).

Then, the baby was born and not faced with 24/7 hunger I stopped buying the Bistro Boxes.  Enter the Sous Vide Egg Bites this past January.  Since we own a precision cooker (item required to sous vide things), I wanted to give them a try.  And, they were pretty good.  Add to that that soccer/baseball season is coming up pretty soon so I’ll be spending many entire Saturdays away from the house.  I thought, maybe I can replicate these snacks, only with the ingredients I want.  They would be reasonably healthy and are designed to grab and go.  They include things that, in many cases, are already at home.  And, it would be a lot cheaper to assemble them myself.

So, I purchased some divided Tupperware containers to keep the wetter things from the dryer things or the colder from the warmer (though I’m trying to keep anything extra warm or extra cold).  And, behold, I have everything I need for homemade Bistro Boxes – apples, grapes, cheese, egg, and crackers.  My plan is to assemble on Friday night so I can grab and go on Saturdays.

Then I came to the heart of the issue, the egg bites.  I found some inspiration from Anova (https://anovaculinary.com/easy-homemade-sous-vide-egg-bites/), bought some 4 oz jelly jars, and adapted the recipe to what I had at home.  These came out lighter than Starbucks’ version – more like the creme in creme brulee.  But, they were tasty, easy enough, and batch cooked so I’ll have them for a while.

Sous Vide Eggs
Adapted from Anova

Ingredients:
12 eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup grated gruyere cheese
½ tsp salt
4 Tbsp diced red pepper (this could be about anything, but you’re looking for 4-6 Tbsp total volume)

Directions:

1. Set your precision cooker to 172°.
2. In a blender, combine the eggs, heavy cream, cheese, and salt.
3. Divide among 12 4-oz jelly jars, filling about half full.
4. Divide the peppers (filling) among the jars.
5. Use the rest of the egg mix to top up the jars.
6. Use the two-part lids and close to finger tightness.
7. Submerge the jars in the water bath for 1 hour.
8. When done, if you are not eating immediately, move to a cold water bath to bring to room temperature before stashing in the refrigerator.
9. They can be eaten straight from the jar.  Or, use a butter knife around the edge to loosen from the jar and invert.  When ready to eat, microwave for 30 seconds.  (Or, I’m sure a few moments under a broiler to brown would be great.  I just haven’t tried that yet.)

First, this is not a review of a dish from their restaurant, but a review of the recipe for the dish from their website.

I’ve mentioned before that I received a box of Eataly foods for Christmas.  Two items in the bag were paccheri (large cylindrical pasta) and canned cherry tomatoes.  I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with those so I started poking around online and found many recipes that put the two items together, but only Eataly’s used 1 can of tomatoes.

In retrospect this should have been a sign.  Compare their picture of the dish to mine.

There is a lot more sauce.  Also, the cheese is still inside the pasta vs melted into a puddle on the bottom.  The flavors of the dish were fine – like lasagna.  Overall, though, it was unnecessarily complicated.  And, it came out nothing like the picture.

I found there were some other oddities as well.  For example, the steps (paraphrased) were in this order:

1. Make tomato sauce.  Remove from the heat and cover to keep warm.
2. Make the cheese filling.
3. Boil the pasta.  Drain and cool.
4. Stuff pasta with filling.  Top with sauce.  Bake.

Basically the entire recipe is written as if done at different stations at a restaurant.  The parts of the dish would be done filling, pasta, sauce by a single home cook to keep things at the right temperature.  Also, with the ingredient quantities listed, there is far too much pasta for the amounts of filling and sauce.  You would need three times the sauce (3 cans of tomatoes per pound of pasta was the typical amount I found in other recipes) and double the cheese filling.

All in all I found this disappointing as Mario Batali has plenty of cookbooks.  I’ve never tried cooking from one so I don’t know if they present similar problems.  But, I did try the Risotto with Tomato & Basil from Eataly and its instructions were similarly odd/insufficient.  This is definitely an area they need to work on.