“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. 🍄
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.
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. 🍅
Oh boy, another pork tenderloin recipe. This is the last of my Costco pack, but I’m going tomorrow, so who knows what I’ll come home with. 7-1: Pork Tenderloin with Mushrooms is the first card in Group 07: Pork, and a pretty straightforward recipe. Other pork tenderloin recipes I’ve covered so far include 7-27: Pork Tenderloin in Creamy Sauce, 7-34: Grilled Pork Slices with Garlic, and 7-36: Pork Tenderloin with Curry Sauce.
This recipe includes parsnips, a root vegetable related to carrots and parsley. Parsnips are usually winter vegetables, but I think you could probably still get away with it in mid-April.
Since there’s been a lot of asparagus around lately, I’ve been trying to get through as many asparagus-related Simply Delicious recipes as I can. 5-39: Asparagus-Clam Quiche doesn’t sound particularly exciting or palatable, but it involves our featured ingredient and we have to cover them all, so onward we go.
Quiche is not a foreign concept for Simply Delicious–check out 5-1: Mushroom & Cheese Pie, 5-7: Quiche Lorraine, or 5-23: Cheese Pie with Tomatoes for a few different takes on the dish.
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.
I’ve done over 100 recipes for this project so far, and I’m about a week shy of working on it for 2 years. Most of those recipes weren’t bad. Maybe not repeats, but not too many of them stick out as YUCK in my mind…until now. I did NOT like 12-2: Rice and Vegetable Bake, but maybe that’s just me–I can admit that I’m weird about certain textures and flavors.
Simply Delicious describes this dish as “colorful” and “nutritious”, which is 1980s code for “bland diet/health food that nobody really likes but can tolerate to varying degrees”. Having had too much of this kind of stuff forced upon me throughout my parents’ yo-yo dieting phases, the mere notion sends a shiver down my spine.
Onward, for science. 💀
Late March/early April is right around the time asparagus begins its short season, so if you happen to find yourself with some in the near future, here’s a recipe for you: 4-9: Asparagus with Italian Butter Sauce. I served this as a side dish along with 8-20: Juicy Steak with Garlic Topping.
There’s such a short window of time when asparagus is in season–you start seeing it around March-April, and it’s done around early summer, in June-July. We’ve recently signed back up for our CSA box after a break, and asparagus was waiting for us in the first one.
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.