First of all, ANY mention of 3-8: Gazpacho must immediately be followed with a reference to this episode of the Simpsons.
“It’s tomato soup served ICE cold!”
Yes, Lisa. Yes it is. 🍅
It was the end of summer and we had a ton of tomatoes. It’s a winning combination. 🏆
There’s not a lot of NEW options when it comes to ground meat. Tacos, stroganoff, lasagna, burgers, meatloaf, etc. This one isn’t exactly new either, but hey–we can always use another ground meat recipe.
Even Simply Delicious knows they aren’t treading on new ground here. However, here’s the one warning about working with a wok: have a HOT stove. If you don’t–woks don’t work so well.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t had lasagna before. It’s not very difficult to make, but often very time-consuming. The first entry in the Pasta & Rice section is the old standby: 12-1: Lasagna.
This version is different than what I’m used to making: it uses a cheese sauce (similar to a béchamel) in place of a ricotta/egg mixture. It was good, but I think I’d choose the ricotta/egg mixture in terms of what I think of when I think of “lasagna”.
Back from the dead, or so it would seem.
I took a break from cooking for the internet to cook in real life–I’ve gotten a job cooking at a craft brewery/restaurant 3-5 days a week. Cooking at home isn’t always the most exciting thing when you do it for a living, but it IS good practice, so I vow to carry on.
I’ve still been doing a few recipes here and there during my hiatus. Let’s get back into it. I can’t promise consistency, but I’ll do my best.
One of the last recipes I made in our interim/summer kitchen was 8-40: Lemony Beef. It was both lemony and beefy. 🍋
This one was pretty quick and easy, and elicited remarks from hungry passerby in the house who were not partaking in the meal. It sounds strange, but it works pretty well.
This recipe was cooked in tandem with an earlier recipe, 9-31: Savory Turkey Patties. We had some different dietary preferences in our dining group that evening, so I used the opportunity to knock out two recipes at once. 🍔
I think it’s interesting that they refer to the burgers as “meat patties” and not “pork” patties or burgers. Just a thought.
4-17: Crispy Potato Pancakes is one of the last recipes I cooked in the kitchen with the blue tile counters and yellow walls–-our travels have taken us elsewhere. However, even though the backgrounds will change, the project lives on.
These are essentially latkes. Very delicious latkes, I may add. If you have a food processor, these are a breeze.
Here’s another potato recipe for you. I had a LOT of potatoes to cook. This was the complement to 11-16: Indian Fried Fish, which I posted a few days ago.
This one got stuck to the page before it in the book–hence the destroyed-looking card. You can still see the important parts though–these are mighty tasty. My notes indicate I made it in a chipotle-style a few Christmases ago–we’ll do it legit for this one. For science. 🔬
I’ve been making a lot of potato recipes lately. There’s a 10 lb. bag in my pantry I’ve been working my way through, so expect a few more potato recipes over the next few weeks. We’ll start here with one I’ve made before–4-11: Potato Soufflé with Onions.
More of my handwriting. I’ve made this one before, and this time I remember the circumstances and my adaptations–see what good notes will do for you?
Here’s another dessert for you. Book 3, Group 3 (Desserts), Subgroup 17 (Baked Goods) gives us card #9: Brownies. I’ve made these a bazillion times, and they are a GREAT base for adding your own ingredients.
These are good, easy, and fast–the trifecta you’re never supposed to be able to achieve. I highly recommend them, and I keep this recipe on hand for whenever I want to make brownies. One big difference: these use actual chocolate, not cocoa powder. 🍫
In 3-13: Velvety Carrot Soup, I talked about how I love old cookbooks for their colorful attempts at trying to make boring recipes sound exciting. Another cookbook “trope” is putting words like easy, simple or quick in the title of a recipe that would otherwise sound…well, not those things.
Sometimes they live up to their titles, and sometimes not. A prime example of the former would be 6-4: Easy Stuffed Chicken Breasts. To be honest, stuffing chicken breasts doesn’t even sound that hard to begin with, so I suppose it didn’t even need that qualifier.
Unless it sounded hard to you–if that’s the case, ignore that last sentence. 🙂 It’s really not that hard, is what I’m saying.