Half Homemade, Fully Delicious: An "In the Kitchen with David" Cookbook from QVC's Resident Foodie

by David Venable

The popular host of QVC’s In the Kitchen with David ® offers a new collection of 110 simple, time-saving recipes that will change the way you shop, cook, and enjoy homemade meals.
 
Like busy people everywhere, David Venable wants to spend less time in the kitchen prepping and cooking and more time at the table with family and friends. From appetizers to desserts, the 110 dishes in Half Homemade, Fully Delicious show home cooks how to take advantage of supermarket shortcuts with ready-to-use products found in every grocery aisle. These cook-friendly spice blends, jarred sauces, frozen fruits, canned foods, and prepped vegetables mean satisfying meals are ready in a fraction of the usual time. A looks-good-enough-to-eat photograph accompanies each recipe. From breakfast to breads, casseroles to cast-iron cooking, there are ideas for every meal and gathering.
 
Here’s a sampling of what you’ll
• Cheeseburger Hand Pies
• Hawaiian Breakfast Bake
• Sloppy Joe Soup
• Anytime Autumn Salad
• Oven-Baked Baby Back Ribs with Lettuce Slaw
• Ground Beef–Noodle Casserole
• Reuben “Sandwich” Skillet Bake
• Creamy Corn off the Cob
• Rosé Summer Spritzers
• Donut Bread Pudding
• Chocolate Dream Icebox Pie
 
As acclaimed restaurateur and Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian writes in his foreword, “What David does better than anyone than I know is take the simplest, most ordinary ingredients and in practically no time create something extraordinary. In this book, Half Homemade, Fully Delicious, David shares his secrets on how to make incredible meals incredibly easy. He expertly shows you how to take store-bought staples and pair them with fresh ingredients for dishes that never compromise on taste.”

Genres: Cookbooks

288 pages, Hardcover

Published October 26, 2021

Reviews

[Julie H. Ernstein · Rating 1 out of 5]

I recently purchased Half Homemade, Fully Delicious as a possible Easter basket item for someone interested in expanding their repertoire but short on time. After reading through the front matter and scoping its contents, I took the apple cake on p. 215 for a spin. What a spectacular disappointment. Both the cooking temperature and cooking time were wrong. It instructs one to bake the slightly too-sweet batter at 350F for 70-80 minutes. After nearly 100 minutes (which was super fun at 6-minute increments), I removed it from the oven in disgust with wet crumb on the toothpick hoping that perhaps the residual heat might tackle that during the as-instructed 45-minute cool. (At an extra 20 mins. the apples were quite darkened and not in a tasty, caramelizing way.) Despite preparing the Bundt pan precisely as instructed, the cake did not want to release. So we sliced it directly from the pan after it cooled. Our verdict: incompetent instruction and a solid meh on taste.

I cook and bake a lot and read a good many cookbooks. I'll select one more recipe to test in case this was a one-off. If it's equally problematic, it'll be straight into the recycle bin for this. Who wants a cookbook that you need to correct?

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great images and simple straight recipes!