“À la Grecque” means “in the Greek way” in French, and 2-2: Mushrooms à la Grecque is a French preparation of vegetables (in this case mushrooms) in a seasoned oil and wine marinade. Simply Delicious considers this a salad, so I guess we’ll go with that description as well.
This is essentially marinated mushrooms, a pretty classic dish. This one’s pretty simple, it holds well, and most people are into it, so it makes a good party dish too. 🍄
I’ve often talked during this project about my mother and her predilection towards recipe experimentation. One of these instances was where she attempted to make gumbo–I’m not sure where she got the recipe from, but I remember the family failing to choke down poorly cooked okra and my father making a quick run to KFC while she surreptitiously got rid of the rest.
The mere mention of gumbo usually brings this unsavory memory back, and so I attempted 11-26: Fish Gumbo with a fair amount of trepidation.
Roux is something I’ve covered several times throughout this project, and it’s an essential flavor and texture component of gumbo. Letting a roux brown deepens its flavor, and there’s a fine line between too light and over cooked.
It’s been a while since I’ve covered something out of Group 03: Soups on here–the last one was 3-14: Creamy Corn Chowder back in January. 3-20: Italian Tomato Soup is pretty simple when it comes to ingredients…and flavor. I ended up inadvertently turning my batch into what was essentially Spaghetti-Os, but even that wasn’t terrible.
This soup is pretty basic–Simply Delicious has you add a bit of cream to make it more of a bisque-type tomato soup. If it’s not tomato season, no worries–you can make this with canned tomatoes too. 🍅
There are LOTS of different ways to prepare meatballs–at least 20 according to this Serious Eats piece. So far, the only meatball recipe I’ve covered on here is 9-4: Swedish Meatballs, although 9-44: Wok-Fried Beef Patties are pretty close. A quick Google search brings up albondigas for “South American meatballs”. Prior to 9-30: South American Meatballs, my only experience with either of these concepts is something similar to this recipe that you get at Mexican restaurants. And none of it involves coconut. 🌴
Coconut is the main thing here–it’s meatballs with coconut all up in there. It’s not a bad taste, just an an acquired one. Paprika is usually associated with Hungarian (European) cuisine, but its origins are in the Americas, brought over during all of that New World/Old World business in the 16th century.
Since the last entry was a garlic & beef entry (8-20: Juicy Steak with Garlic Topping), here’s another garlic recipe for you, this time with pork: 7-34: Grilled Pork Slices with Garlic. I used a cast-iron grill pan for this, but you could use a BBQ or even just do a pan-sear if that’s what you’ve got.
This is some serious garlic game–whole cloves, in fact. But they’re right–blanching them does make them pretty mild and yummy. If you’re willing to risk some garlic breath, this recipe is a pretty decent one to check out.
In 8-17: Pan-Fried Steak with Onions, I talked about using a different method to cook steaks than what’s usually written in these recipes–namely, the restaurant method where you sear the meat on the stove and finish cooking in the oven. If you want some practice with that method, 8-20: Juicy Steak with Garlic Topping is a decent (and garlicky) recipe for it.
Honestly, it sounds like even Simply Delicious couldn’t think of anything especially creative or memorable to say about this dish. It’s not much more than steak with some garlicky cheese on top, but if that interests you, read on.
I had mentioned in 7-36: Pork Tenderloin with Curry Sauce that I had an abundance of pork tenderloin due to a Costco sale. As I work my way through the freezer (mostly because I keep adding new things into it), I find myself with another pork tenderloin–this time, we’ll try it as 7-27: Pork Tenderloin in Creamy Sauce.
There’s not a HUGE difference conceptually between this one and 7-36: Pork Tenderloin with Curry Sauce–the major differences are just spices & condiments added to the final sauce. Otherwise, this is another perfectly serviceable weeknight dinner option, or even a decent meal for entertaining.
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.
Well folks, this is the 100th cooked recipe I’ve made for this project, which is just shy of 2 years old at this point. I chose 1-13: Crusty Toast with Mushrooms to be the 100th recipe for a reason–it was one of two recipes (along with 1-33: Artichoke & Roasted Pepper Dip) that inspired me to do this project in the first place.
I made this for a birthday party I’ve mentioned before along with 1-8: Delicious Cocktail Snacks and 16-37: Double Decadent Brownie Torte. It’s a great appetizer and a delicious snack.
There’s a couple of rib recipes in Simply Delicious, but this one’s probably the most basic. It’s still a bit too cold out to BBQ, but 7-5: Spareribs gives you a pretty decent oven method of cooking ribs. As is usually the case, the inspiration for these came from needing room in my freezer after picking ribs up on sale somewhere a month or two ago.
Simply Delicious seems to echo my sentiments. However, their choice of the creepy pig doll for the recipe picture was less than optimal. Anyway, this is pretty easy to do, not that hard to clean up, and works pretty well. Sounds like a winner to me.