I had mentioned in 1-8: Delicious Cocktail Snacks that I had attended a birthday party recently–I used 16-37: Double Decadent Brownie Torte as part of the birthday cake that I made for it. This is one I’ve made before, and this time I kept some of the changes I made the first time.
I noted that I made this with Kahlúa whipped cream the first time. I did that this time too, along with a Kahlúa pastry cream to layer between 2 layers of torte.
I recently attended a birthday party, and was tasked with making some of the dishes for the party (as is usually the case). Seeing as some of the guests were “old-school” about their dining preferences, I decided to use up some of the more “old-school” recipes. 1-8: Delicious Cocktail Snacks looks exactly like something a waiter would be carrying around at a fancy cocktail party in an old movie.
So retro. These were pretty easy to make, and actually held really well in the fridge before the party. I reheated them at the party and it worked great–just a thought if you need something for a party that you can make earlier, transport and/or reheat later.
A few weekends ago, on a sleepy Saturday morning, I found myself with many eggs, some fresh parsley, and a desire for an omelette. Since I’m now at the point that every time I cook, I consider whether I could use up a Simply Delicious recipe on it, I knew there had to be a true omelette recipe in there, given their heavy reliance on French fine-dining recipes & methods. If you find yourself in a similar predicament, consider making 5-21: Omelette with Herbs.
Simply Delicious shows the half-fold omelette method in their pictures–I’ve always preferred the Alton Brown tri-fold omelette method. This is a truly classic French-style omelette, unlike the last omelette I covered (and messed up), 5-11: Country Omelette.
I had mentioned in 6-35: Chicken Diable that I had another recipe that I needed to save some of the chicken breasts for–6-49: Cheese-Glazed Chicken Rolls was it. I don’t usually keep chicken breasts around (I think they’re dry and not particularly flavorful), so when I do have them, it’s best to try to knock out as many recipes as possible.
Simply Delicious has a lot of variations of “light chicken breast dinners”–it was the 1980s. If you’re interested in some of these, check out 6-4: Easy Stuffed Chicken Breasts, the aforementioned 6-35: Chicken Diable, or 6-40: Peppercorn Chicken Breasts.
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 a pretty basic “chicken with sauce” type recipe that can be fancy or not-so-fancy. “Chicken Diable” or “Chicken a la Diable”, as evidenced by the name, is essentially “the Devil’s chicken”, evoking images of spices and fire. 🌶 🔥 As Serious Eats notes in their version of the dish, the French have a very different idea of spiciness than some other cultures.
Everyone’s got their version of this dish–here’s Bon Appetit’s, and Google turns up many more results. Whether it’s actually spicy is up to you–if you actually like things spicy, prepare to have to add some heat to this one.
Another recipe attempt born of Costco sale inspiration and brought down by too much time between buying stuff and using it up. I did my best with 12-9: Pasta with Salmon and Basil, but I probably didn’t do it justice.
This was the only recipe in Simply Delicious that I could find that used salmon filets, not steaks. I somehow had it in my head that there were several recipes that used salmon, and so was disappointed to find that this was the only one that I was going to knock out, despite now having a few pounds of salmon.
Back when I made 7-55: Sunday Pork Stew, I had mentioned that I was intending on making a different recipe, but that I didn’t have the mushrooms to make it. This recipe, 7-9: Hunter’s-Style Pork Chops, was the recipe I was intending to make.
EDIT: This seems to be a popular recipe–it wasn’t one of my favorites, but I hope you enjoy! If you want to know more about this site/me, read this. Thanks for visiting!
“Hunter’s-style pork chops” seems to be a thing, although I’ve never heard of it before this book. Most recipes out there cite it as a “comfort food”, although if they’re already using the word “bland” in and around the recipe (see the second line above on the card), don’t expect anything avant garde.
Costco had pork tenderloin on sale, so I’ll use that as an opportunity to work my way through some of those recipes in the book. Here’s 7-36: Pork Tenderloin with Curry Sauce, which I made for dinner a few weeks ago.
True to its claims, I made this one pretty quickly one weeknight for dinner. You could make this with a cheaper cut of pork as well (such as a chop) if you don’t want to pay for the more expensive tenderloin cut.
Here’s one I’ve been meaning to make for a while. As I mentioned in 9-12: Shepherd’s Pie and 6-30: Scottish Chicken Casserole, I had too many potatoes after a Costco shopping trip, so I’ve been burning off potato recipes.
Potato pancakes have been done before, along with a zucchini version as well. So what’s different about this one? For one, this one features an umlaut. 😉