Never before did I think, “Boy, I should stuff some onions and eat them.” 9-18: Stuffed Onions were not the easiest dish to prepare and I don’t think I would ever choose to prepare it again.
This dish did taste exactly like meat loaf. It is a lot easier to make a meat loaf than to stuff onions, so next time, I’ll get the loaf pan out and chop the onions up.
9-2: Mexican Fiesta sounds exciting, but it’s really just poorly layered nachos. I know that they were trying to make it seem like a casserole, but all the good stuff that goes in tacos/nachos is basically layered in a pan and covered with a layer of chips on top. I think you’re supposed to eat it like a dip? 🌮
I like the touch of the Corona with a lime in the background of their picture, like all of a sudden that makes it a party. I can’t think of too many decent Mexican places that would serve something like this, but if you want something festive yet inoffensive for a party or a lengthy Netflix session, I suppose this recipe could get the job done. 🌶
Hello readers, I’m Adam, your usual author’s husband, chiming in with a guest post. Jamie has these Simply Delicious recipes hung on our kitchen cabinets like a restaurant rail full of orders. There were some easy level recipes that I thought I could cook while Jamie was busy trying to finish her backlog of blog entries. 9-15: Peppercorn Beef Burgers are my first such attempt at preparing a recipe and photographing the process. I have to say that I had a lot of fun (I lit the sauce on fire!🔥) and you’ll see a few more guest posts from me coming up.
I’ve made more than a few burgers in my day, but the sauce on these patties did elevate the dish to a higher level.
We’ve covered the fact that burger patties are a common recipe for using ground meat–9-25: Juicy Grilled Meat Patties, 9-44: Wok-Fried Beef Patties, and 9-31: Savory Turkey Patties are just a few of the methods outlined by Simply Delicious. 9-24: Tangy Double Meat Patties are another variation, this time with a flavorful filling of your choice.
Snappy is such a great adjective for describing food. I don’t think anything past about 1988 has been described as such, but if you dig into the 1950s-60s era of cookbooks (of which I have a ton), it’s all over the place.
Here’s another one of those 1980s attempts at “healthy”. 9-10: Lean Meatballs with Tomato Sauce calls for the use of veal, which doesn’t immediately resonate with me as being “healthy”. A quick and dirty Google search comes up with veal having less calories than pork but more cholesterol than beef. Calories were the enemy in the 1980s, so I suppose that’s part of their justification for deeming veal meatballs “healthy”.
I’m not a huge fan of veal, and considering there’s a whole lamb & veal section to this book that I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of, we’re going to keep these meatballs “healthy” and swap veal for turkey. My mom was (and still is) a huge proponent of ground turkey, so this is probably a swap she or I would have made if we’d made this before.
Here’s one I’ve made before. In one of my previous entries (6-22: Crispy Chicken Drumsticks), I mentioned doing all the cooking for a family dinner party when I was 12-13 years old with a similarly-aged family friend of mine. 9-20: Meat Roly-Poly is another one of the recipes I remember making for that party.
Another memory from this dinner party: I had just gotten a new CD (Version 2.0 by Garbage) and we were listening to it on my parents’ GIANT 1970s hi-fi stereo system over and over as we spent the day cooking. Gives you an idea of how old I am, and how long I’ve been cooking from this book.
It’s taken me a while to think of something original to say about 9-33: Teriyaki Meat Loaf. Neither component is revolutionary at this point–there’s not too many people left in 2016 that are unaware of either concept, and Asian fusion is nowhere near a new culinary trend. There’s a million versions out there–here’s just a few. I’ve even already covered meatloaf on here before–9-28: Stuffed Meat Loaf.
Simply Delicious’ version of teriyaki is pretty close–usually it’s composed of soy sauce, mirin, and ginger. It was probably more difficult to source mirin in the 1980s, so they used sherry instead. Anyway, after the jump you can read about yet another way to do meat loaf.
There are LOTS of different ways to prepare meatballs–at least 20 according to this Serious Eats piece. So far, the only meatball recipe I’ve covered on here is 9-4: Swedish Meatballs, although 9-44: Wok-Fried Beef Patties are pretty close. A quick Google search brings up albondigas for “South American meatballs”. Prior to 9-30: South American Meatballs, my only experience with either of these concepts is something similar to this recipe that you get at Mexican restaurants. And none of it involves coconut. 🌴
Coconut is the main thing here–it’s meatballs with coconut all up in there. It’s not a bad taste, just an an acquired one. Paprika is usually associated with Hungarian (European) cuisine, but its origins are in the Americas, brought over during all of that New World/Old World business in the 16th century.
Meat pies have been around for a LONG time (like 9500 BCE old, according to Wikipedia). They cross a lot of cultures and are featured in some fashion in most cuisines (even if they look somewhat different–for example, empanadas, lahmacun, and samosas all are meat/pastry combinations from varied places). 9-22: Meat Pie is probably closest to the French Canadian tradition of meat pies, otherwise known as tourtière.
This one’s got some of my old notes on it–I’ve made this one before, about 6-7 years ago for my friend’s birthday party (the same friend from the 80s party in 1-22: Onion-Potato Diamonds). It was a “pie party” because he was (at the time) obsessed with the Keri Russell movie Waitress, which apparently has something to do with a lot of pies.
I made some adjustments to the recipe the first time (you can see those listed on the side), but this time, we’re going legit.
Here’s one with my mom’s writing on it. 9-12: Shepherd’s Pie promises to be a new take on an old classic and I had a LOT of potatoes to get rid of. Don’t buy a 20-lb bag of potatoes from Costco because it’s “such a good deal”.
I can’t say I’m particularly a fan of shepherd’s pie, but I had all the ingredients and a lot of potatoes to burn up. It stores/freezes well, and this version uses red peppers and beef instead of carrots/peas/corn and lamb (that’s why it’s shepherd’s pie–because of the sheep/lamb). 🐑