Green sauce can mean a lot of different things (pesto, chimichurri, etc.), but for 12-41: Spaghetti with Green Sauce, it features leek tops. Because this recipe is so light, I made this dish for a quick lunch during the week.
The sauce in the photo doesn’t look as green as a pesto, but it definitely is green.
It’s the middle of summer right now, so soup’s probably not your first thought. However, I continue to be surprised that how no matter how hot outside it is, people still enjoy soup. So here’s a classic: 3-3: French Onion Soup.
Simply Delicious cites Les Halles (the Parisian farmers’ market, not the NY restaurant where Anthony Bourdain worked) as the originator of French onion soup. I wasn’t able to directly verify that with 5 minutes of lazy Googling, but I did find a food timeline that gives a bit of the dish’s history–I suppose their claim is totally still possible.
Never before did I think, “Boy, I should stuff some onions and eat them.” 9-18: Stuffed Onions were not the easiest dish to prepare and I don’t think I would ever choose to prepare it again.
This dish did taste exactly like meat loaf. It is a lot easier to make a meat loaf than to stuff onions, so next time, I’ll get the loaf pan out and chop the onions up.
I have never cooked steak using the method in this recipe, 8-11: Sirloin Steak Baked in Foil, before and I probably would never cook them this way again. I like all the extra garnish, but it is a pain to cut and prepare that many vegetables for people to pick around to get to the main ingredient, the BEEF. 🐮
I used the red wine suggestion on the card, but I felt like I should have used beef broth to keep the beef-y flavor. This recipe also keeps a trend going, sticking with the foil pouch cooking method that Jamie used in the previous recipe on here, 6-25: Salmon-Filled Chicken Breasts.
12-18: Mushroom Risotto is another recipe with a loose definition of risotto. This one didn’t even ask you to cook the rice in wine, just broth. I already had some mushroom broth infused white rice on hand, but the recipe called for brown rice.
This ended up being a dish that tastes very similar to the 12-41: Spaghetti with Green Sauce recipe that I cooked recently. Mushrooms and basil give this dish an earthy flavor. 🍄
Here’s a short one that was a solo dish for me (those cream ones always end up being a solo affair) – 12-26: Pasta with Creamy Shrimp. I envisioned it being more like an Alfredo sauce and less like herb-filled whipped cream with shrimp in it, but unfortunately the latter is what I got.
The description on this one is deceiving–it’s honest, yet vague. There is cream, shrimp, and horseradish–and it is easy to prepare. However, the “mouthwatering” and “delicious” descriptors were noticeably maladapt for me. 🍤
Simply Delicious can give a dish a title that seems a bit of a stretch at times and this is definitely a prime case of this phenomenon: 12-16 Risotto with Pastrami.
Editor’s note: A big HELLO to those of you coming here from search engines–apparently there’s significant demand for pastrami risotto? This is one of those sites where we (my husband and I) are working our way through an old set of cookbooks–learn more about it here. Don’t expect anything like traditional risotto here (neither of us wrote any of the actual recipes)–but maybe stick around for an interesting read or two? Thanks for stopping by! 👋
The card even announces, “(t)his recipe for risotto differs from the traditional one.” I’ve never seen a dish like this, but the flavor profile was the same as a fancy omelette, just deconstructed before that was trendy.
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.
Here’s another one of those 1980s attempts at “healthy”. 9-10: Lean Meatballs with Tomato Sauce calls for the use of veal, which doesn’t immediately resonate with me as being “healthy”. A quick and dirty Google search comes up with veal having less calories than pork but more cholesterol than beef. Calories were the enemy in the 1980s, so I suppose that’s part of their justification for deeming veal meatballs “healthy”.
I’m not a huge fan of veal, and considering there’s a whole lamb & veal section to this book that I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of, we’re going to keep these meatballs “healthy” and swap veal for turkey. My mom was (and still is) a huge proponent of ground turkey, so this is probably a swap she or I would have made if we’d made this before.
Here’s a healthier option–some of the last few have been more on the indulgent side. Don’t get me wrong–there’s plenty more indulgence to come. 12-5: Greek Rice is a nice vegetarian option for a party, picnic, or just an everyday meal. I’m not entirely sure what makes it “Greek”, but we’ll go with it.
What else can I say–it’s just not that exciting. The final dish actually ends up similar to what Americans call Spanish rice, but with more veggies and a somewhat tangy flavor. If that interests you, read on.