Here’s 11-21: Baked Whitefish with Shrimp—Simply Delicious is big on fish and cheese together. We’ve seen that combination already with 11-21: Best Ever Sole Au Gratin and 11-4: Calzone with Seafood.
You don’t see too many creamy, cheesy baked fish recipes these days, do you? 🤔
Simply Delicious has several takes on pizza–we’ve covered quite a few already including 13-11: Vegetarian Pizza, 1-9: Four Seasons Pizza, and 5-31: Oven Pizza Pancake. There’s even 11-4: Calzone with Seafood if you like your pizza folded in half with toppings on the inside. 9-16: Individual Salami Pizzas is probably one of the more “traditional” pizza recipes so far.
It’s recommended to make this for something like a kid’s party, since it’s pretty tough to find a kid who will say no to pizza. I was a teacher for several years, ran a meal program for a school for a year or two, and I’m here to tell you that pizza (in whatever shape/form/capacity) was always a crowd pleaser for young and old.
More queue-cleaning–add 5-8: Royal Crêpes to the pile of other crêpe recipes that I’ve done over the course of this project. When I first started making crêpes for this project about 4 years ago now, I had never made crêpes before. Now I feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on the concept, so let’s kick it up a notch with a “royal” version. 👑
Oh no–my mortal enemy: Hollandaise sauce. I’ve struggled with it in the past–will this be my redemption? Jump behind the cut and find out!
The quote from the front of the recipe card for 6-27: Sweet-and-Sour Chicken is as true as anything I could write about this recipe:
“Cook chicken legs and thighs the Chinese way, in a sweet-and-sour sauce. This is such a simple way of preparing bargain chicken and the result is just terrific.“
Sweet-and-sour sauce tastes great when you make it fresh, but it’s just as easy to buy the thick, red sauce in a jar and call it good.
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They’re not kidding about the “fragile” part when it comes to these tartlettes–I originally made these for this project back in July of 2016, but the whole operation went so poorly that I abandoned it and never even posted about it.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.
I’m counting 1-10: Seafood Cocktail Louisiana as the fourth dish I made of this year’s 7-recipe Thanksgiving cooking marathon (TGV 2016) , but its components actually spanned a few days (and a few cooks). This was one of three appetizers I made for my Thanksgiving dinner–the others being a crudité & hummus platter and 1-5: Pigs in a Blanket.
My mom was always big on the idea of “shrimp cocktail” as being necessary for Thanksgiving dinner appetizers (it was always part of her family’s holiday dinner when she was growing up), so in order to honor that idea, I chose this recipe.
As I mentioned above, I’m counting this as the fourth dish I made–it spanned Wed. 11/23 and Thu. 11/24 as different components had varying levels of make-in-advance-ability. My sous chef made the dressing and prepped shrimp the first night, while I assembled the dish itself right before serving the next day.
Cooking a pizza on a pancake dough creates a very kooky, weird pizza experience. 5-31: Oven Pizza Pancake is not your usual pizza–this soft-crusted abomination is another dish created when the Simply Delicious editors decided to have one too many beers at the office.
The beer in the background of this image should have been my first clue that this was a strange dish.
Editor’s note: I used this recipe for when I taught cooking in an after-school program for K-8 kids a few years ago–I didn’t have the time or resources to make a traditional rising dough using yeast on that particular site, so this method provided me a somewhat valid shortcut.
I wasn’t about to go out and buy mini quiche pans just to cook 5-5: Individual Ham Quiches. Taking the alternative route, I made this dish as one, full-sized quiche.
I believe the card puts it best. At this point I’m not quite “fortunate enough to own small oven-proof quiche pans,” so a full-sized pie pan will do. If you use a foil pie pan, there is a lot less cleanup when the quiche is done, just toss the foil pan in the recycling. ♻
Here’s another Simply Delicious recipe that exists outside of this book: 5-19: Eggs en Cocotte is a version of a pretty well-known French way to cook eggs. Variably known as shirred eggs (although that’s slightly different), this is a really easy (and delicious) breakfast or lunch option.
Cocotte has a rather interesting meaning outside of the culinary world–I’ll leave it to you to find out. 👄
Here’s something a bit different…and I’m not talking about the recipe. In fact, 12-27: Chicken Broccoli Lasagna itself is pretty boring. But here’s what’s interesting: I made this recipe at work, for work. This one will be a bit of a glance into what I do all day–my other kitchen, if you will.
I usually use ground turkey for ground meat recipes (there’s a few kids with special dietary preferences) and I’ve made lasagna before for work, so this one seemed like a perfect recipe to try to scale up for the amount I need for a daily meal. “Healthy” is what parents are looking for these days when it comes to school lunches–another way this recipe is a good fit. 🍴
EDIT: Full disclosure–this was written in 2016, and I now have a career in a completely non-culinary related field. However, this still serves as a fun reminder of a previous “life”. Enjoy!