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Category: Dinner with Tennessee Williams

9: That Spaghetti Dish “Dirty Rice” Pasta

This recipe is…. interesting. The name totally makes sense once you see the ingredients. But the flavor? Eeeeeeeeehhhhhh. Double the salt and it’s pretty ok? Not one of the best.

Category: Entree

Rating: 2 out of 10

Make Again? Not so much

8: Beef Tip Stroganoff

This recipe brought back so much nostalgia! I used to love when my mom made beef stroganoff. I did mess it up just a *wee* bit. I didn’t have any sour cream, but I have two giant tubs of green yogurt atm because costco had a sale, what can I say. So I used that and mixed it when the beef was still really hot, so it curdled. User error notwithstanding, it was delicious. Not like show-stopping delicious, but it was a good comfort food recipe. I do recommend this one!

Category: Entree

Rating: 6 out of 10

Make Again? Yes, if I need some comfort food!

6: Pecan-Crusted Sweet Potato Pone

This recipe was definitely very interesting. I love all of the ingredients, but they didn’t blend together as well as I was hoping! I’m not sure that I would make it again, but if you’re into cake-style desserts, this is a Southern classic that you will enjoy!

Category: Dessert

Rating: 3 out of 10

Make Again? Eh, not so much

5: Chop Suey Soup

To be honest, I was not that excited about this recipe. Compared with the other ones, it was not that exciting and pretty simplistic. I guess it’s true that the best things in life are the simple ones!

 

This soup is life-changing. It’s inexpensive, SO easy, and SO delicious. I am going to be making this for a long time, y’all. And OMG. Fried ramen. Let’s talk about that for a second. What a brilliant idea. It’s like eating ramen out the package before you cook it, but warm and crispy and with a delicious fried flavor, obviously. WHAT. It’s so good. Drizzled with hoisin sauce, I’m in heaven.

 

Category: Entree

Rating: 10 out of 10

Make Again? ABSOLUTELY

4: Creme Anglaise

Fancy pudding. That’s what creme anglaise is, essentially. This recipe is a little putsy because you have to cook the cream over the stove, but other than that it is fairly simple, and I think any cook could be successful with this recipe! The result is a very creamy dessert that has just a hint of the brandy and vanilla flavors. There was no recommendation for serving, but I jazzed it up a bit with lemon wafer cookies and morello cherries. It was a satisfying little dessert, but I would only make it again to accompany something a little more show-stopping.

 

Category: Dessert

Rating: (this is the first of this category, so….) 5 out of 10

Make Again? Maybe?

3: BLT Salad

My mom is always telling me about “recipes” that she invented. Salad dressing, mixing dip mix in sour cream… sure, you made something, but that doesn’t quite qualify as a recipe. That’s kind of how I felt about this salad. It’s just a salad of BLT ingredients. Of course, it was really good, because I love a BLT, but I don’t think I’d search for the book on my shelf to make it again. That said, the dressing (which really was a recipe with some interesting ratios I’ve never seen before) was PHENOMENAL. The herbs gave it a rich and almost sharp flavor, and I found myself using the leftover dressing on everything from fish to crackers. That part I would definitely make again!

Category: Entree

Rating: 2 out of 10

Make Again? Just the dressing

2: Baton Aubergines

Aubergines = eggplants

 

These little fried sticks of eggplant were so easy and so delicious! I was a little skeptical of the toppings. The recipe suggests to serve them topped with powdered sugar and parmesan cheese. It was delicious! The sweet and the sharp savory from a very high quality parmesan had a very full flavor and it was exceptional. However, the batons themselves were not terribly great. If you have the cookbook and are making this recipe, I would suggest adding a little more seasoning. Otherwise, they were very good!

Category: Side Dish

Rating: (this is the first of this category, so….) 5

Make Again? Yes!

1: The “Eloquent” Oyster

You’re as eloquent as an oyster

This recipe proved to be quite a challenge for my first choice from this cookbook! Do you know how hard it is to get oysters – let alone GOOD oysters – in Colorado?! VERY HARD. Praise Whole Foods.

I had a nice long chat with the seafood guys about what would be the closest to gulf oysters, and they gave me these freshwater oysters that were about similar in size. They offered to shuck them for me, but I’m never one to shy away from a challenge, so of course I planned to do it myself. After scouring the seafood section, I finally found some escargot and even the caviar that it called for. But it was $17 for about a Tablespoon so… sorry, Tennessee, not worth it. With my car smelling overwhelmingly of seafood, I headed home.

Let me be frank. I don’t have an oyster shucker. This should have registered in my mind as a problem, but I wanted to MacGyver it. Second problem, where was my flathead screwdriver. About thirty minutes and a handful of choice words later, a table knife from Walmart had done the trick for most of them. The shells of two just cracked and wouldn’t budge, so they got chucked, not shucked.

The escargot really was not my jam. I’ve never been a huge fan of it, but I dealt with it anyway. The recipe came together really easily, and it was on the table in no time.

Overall comments: the butter flavors were intense and super rich. With the escargot, the dish was heavy but not too overwhelming. The delicate flavors of the oyster were a little lost, which is a bummer because those were my favorite ingredient.

I’m going to rank each because I’d like to know my overall opinions by the end. Since this is the first one, I’ll give it a 5 as a benchmark for the others. But would I make it again, not really.

Rating: 5

Make Again? No.