That sounds like a good plan. It sounds awkward when someone does that in your language (uses a workaround because he/she doesn't know the usual term) but it is an extra exercise and it keeps you very focused on what you do know and on the target language. In a way, it's like it creates a kind of suspense, a vacuum, where you are intensely focused on the meaning, and when someone who knows the phrase you're looking for tells it to you, you remember it better because you were thinking so intensely about it. Some people say that, when teaching, and the student doesn't understand a word in the target language, it doesn't hurt to just very quickly say the word in the student's first language to jump past the whole process. I do this sometimes for abstract things like "wish" or "gossip". If a student says a word in his/her native language, expecting me to provide the English word, I always make them try to explain it, so they can be thinking in English when I say it.