13-11: Vegetarian Pizza

13-11: Vegetarian Pizza

Just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I appreciate a good slice of pizza. đźŤ• I wouldn’t normally order a vegetarian pizza. Does the Meat Lovers’ special come with 4 or 5 different meats on it?

I haven’t made pizza dough before. I briefly made bread when we scored a bread machine from a thrift store. After using the bread machine 2 or 3 times, I got to see why all of those bread machines are abandoned at the thrift store. Either my process was not good or the machine stopped working correctly after about 2 loaves of bread.


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9-15: Peppercorn Beef Burgers

9-15: Peppercorn Beef Burgers

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.


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6-11: Chinese Duck

6-11: Chinese Duck

Here’s a first for me: I’ve never attempted to break down a duck before this recipe, 6-11: Chinese Duck. I’ve cooked with duck a handful of times, but this is definitely the most involved with it that I’ve ever gotten. There’s one more duck recipe in this book, so expect a return sometime in the future.

I found myself with a duck after my husband took a trip past a local butcher a few weeks ago, so I decided to take a stab at one of the two recipes in the book. I assumed this would be similar to the Chinese dish Peking duck, and in true Simply Delicious style, it doesn’t quite come as close as recipes today can get you.


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9-33: Teriyaki Meat Loaf

9-33: Teriyaki Meat Loaf

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.


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8-17: Pan-Fried Steak with Onions

8-17: Pan-Fried Steak with Onions

Here’s a decent way to do a nice restaurant-style steak at home. 8-17: Pan-Fried Steak with Onions–with a few of my tweaks–is (hopefully) bound to impress whomever you’re cooking for.

I’m a hippie when it comes to some things, but I just love a good steak. My dad is a steak man, and his parents before him. I’ve made quite a few in my day, in a lot of different ways. This is probably the easiest, quickest, and most consistent method. Plus, it won’t set off your smoke detector or require you to go outside.


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7-36: Pork Tenderloin with Curry Sauce

7-36: Pork Tenderloin with Curry Sauce

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.


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12-22: Nasi Goreng

12-22: Nasi Goreng

Here’s something a bit different from the Pasta and Rice chapter. Simply Delicious has a lot of international recipes, some more authentic than others. 12-22: Nasi Goreng is a take on a popular Indonesian fried rice dish, a sweeter and spicier variation of the ubiquitous Chinese take-out version.

This recipe doesn’t give you much in the way of creating Nasi Goreng spices if you don’t have access to or want to use a premixed blend. After the jump, I’ll include a Nasi Goreng spice blend I used and a link to the book from which I pulled it.


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9-26: Crispy Beef Turnovers

9-26: Crispy Beef Turnovers

As I said in 13-13: Spinach Turnovers, the holiday season is upon us and therefore, you’ll need some recipes for dishes to take with you to a party, or at least to snack on while you binge-watch Netflix. 9-26: Crispy Beef Turnovers are the heartier, meatier companion to their spinach and crab brothers.

These are remarkably similar in execution to 13-13: Spinach Turnovers, so I suggest cooking the two at the same time if you want to add some variety to your dish. However, these are mighty tasty, and stand just fine on their own as well. If you have access to a deep-fryer, consider 1-7: Trader Vic’s Crab Turnovers for a crispy, Polynesian-inspired third option.


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7-28: Pork Chops with Rosemary

7-28: Pork Chops with Rosemary

7-28: Pork Chops with Rosemary is a pretty simple pork chop recipe that’s good for a quick dinner. We buy the big packs of chops from Costco, so we always have to come up with different ways to prepare them.

Along with the abundance of pork, we’ve been growing and drying our own rosemary–it’s WAY more potent and flavorful than the packaged stuff from the market. If you have to choose, go with the fresh over the dried–it’ll taste so much better.


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9-44: Wok-Fried Beef Patties

9-44: Wok-Fried Beef Patties

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.


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