We can pretend that 1-37: Savory Cheese Appetizers is something fancy and unique, but it’s really just a blue cheese spread on squares of white bread. If you like blue cheese, I suppose this could be an exciting concept–the 1980s were big on both blue cheese and dips (which this recipe can double as).
Simply Delicious has a lot of blue cheese-related recipes–a few I covered just recently include 5-20: Golden Cheese Tartlettes and 1-20: Prosciutto Appetizers. After making all three of these essentially back-to-back, I’m a little burned out on blue cheese for a while.
Finally, one from the “revisited” pile–those are recipes I’ve already made before, but am making again for the sake of this project. 5-20: Golden Cheese Tartlettes were one of the appetizers I made for a Valentine’s Day 80’s party I talked about in 1-22: Onion-Potato Diamonds–I thought these little cheese tarts seemed very 1980s.
They’re not kidding about the “fragile” part when it comes to these tartlettes–I originally made these for this project back in July of 2016, but the whole operation went so poorly that I abandoned it and never even posted about it. Now that I’ve bought the proper equipment and ingredients for it, it went much smoother.
We’re over 3 years into this project, and I’m only now covering the very first recipe in the book, 1-1: Orange-Glazed Chicken Wings. I don’t think I’ve ever made these wings before, but the memory of coming up with this project and starting to put it into motion (by sitting down and actually scanning the cards) features this recipe very prominently. Since this was the very first one, that might explain why the edges of the card pictures are strangely cropped.
While this would probably make a decent appetizer, I feel like as a society we’ve come pretty far in wing technology and distribution methods in the last 30 years–these are a lot of work for something that are pretty easy and cheap to just buy in, especially in more interesting flavor/spice combinations. There’s entire restaurants dedicated to wings at this point (even ones that don’t feature an owl and scantily-clad women).
We did make wings in-house during my restaurant tenure, but people are awfully finicky about the preferred style (fried vs baked, breaded vs non-breaded, vinegar-based sauce or not, etc.) of their wings, especially when craft beer and other hipster-y stuff like chalkboards and cornhole are involved.
This is not my first time to the broccoli soup rodeo, so 3-33: Broccoli Wild Rice Soup should be a snap. 🏇🏼 A while back, I made 3-21: Broccoli-Celery Soup and broccoli is still in season at the time I am writing this post.
Cold isn’t my favorite temperature when eating soup, but with so much sour cream, the soup may separate during reheating. ❄
15-51: Frozen Strawberry Yogurt: I really liked this cold concoction. I have never attempted a frozen desert before this. I’m glad to say this recipe was a great success. 🍧
This card describes the flavor like a certain presidential candidate I am loathe to quote, except it’s so quotable…it’s fantastic. 🍓
I do enjoy getting falafel when I go out to a Middle-Eastern restaurant. It’s much easier to cook them when you have a deep fryer. In the past, I have pan-fried some falafel, but it tastes the best when it is crispy and fried. Since we happened to be borrowing a deep-fryer, I made 13-7: Falafel.
I didn’t have any pita on hand, so I served the balls with a spicy dipping sauce instead of in the traditional pita pocket.
Lamb and veal were not big in my house growing up, but I’ll eat a bit of lamb every so often these days. I’ve only covered one other lamb recipe so far–10-12: Basil-Baked Lamb. This recipe, 10-14: Lamb on Skewers, actually was made in tandem with that one, since my cut of boneless leg of lamb was too large for that recipe. These skewers can be made with pork, chicken, or just veggies–making them great for a party or event where you have a lot of different dietary preferences.
Making skewers/kebabs is a really good way to use up an extra (or oddly shaped/not pretty) cut of meat, as well as a way to make tough cuts of meat easier to eat. Another benefit: those who have a difficult time eating large pieces of meat (like old people and little kids) might have an easier time with smaller pieces (be careful of choking, though). One more benefit: you cook your vegetables at the same time as your meat–add some rice and you’ve got the whole meal.
Indian never goes well for Simply Delicious. 11-16: Indian Fried Fish was a bust, and 12-22: Nasi Goreng was less than exciting. This recipe, 6-32: Savory Buffet Chicken doesn’t openly identify itself as Indian-inspired, but it’s pretty similar to another clandestinely-influenced recipe, 6-8: Curried Chicken.
“Oriental” is a term you don’t really hear any more (as I mentioned in 7-11: Oriental Pork Stir-Fry), and the language seems a bit flowery for the 1980s. However, this project is not about that stuff–it’s about the food. Let’s press on.
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’sjusta 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.
This was an accompaniment to 12-11: Italian Macaroni & Cheese when I went to a get-together recently. 2-17: Spicy Potato Salad is similar to a German potato salad in style–it uses vinegar & spices as the dressing instead of mayonnaise.
The main difference between this version and most traditional German potato salads is that this one lacks bacon. But if you miss the bacon that much, feel free to go crazy and add it on back in there.
