Mariner's Cookbook

Basic Caesar Salad by Mariner, posted Jun 08, 2024

Unless you just want to eat lettuce all by itself and without any dressing, you can't get much simpler than your basic Caesar salad.

Sort-of-Caesar Salad Dressing by Mariner, posted May 26, 2024

In the summertime we eat a lot of salads, and often those are Caesar salads, which means that we go through a lot of Caesar dressing. Now, for health reasons, I've been forced to cut back on my sugar intake, and most commercial salad dressings - including Caesar dressings - contain significant amounts of sugar; ergo, if I want to continue eating lots of salads, I have to find alternatives to commercially-produced dressings.

Blue cheese salad dressing by Mariner, posted May 24, 2024

This recipe is inspired by Bill's Blue Cheese Dressing at allrecipes.com. The main differences are minor variations in the amounts of ingredients, as well as a difference the preparation method. I suspect that Bill's dressing tastes pretty good; mine does!

Chicken Marsala by Mariner, posted May 19, 2024

One legend has it that this dish was created by Napoleon's chef, when faced with a limited selection of supplies. Another holds that, while it was invented during the Napoleonic Wars, it was created by a Sicilian chef for a French family living in Sicily. In any case, the fact that it requires Marsala wine - a product unique to Sicily - legitimizes its claim to an Italian heritage.

Creamy Italian Dressing by Mariner, posted May 15, 2024

I decided a few days ago to make my own creamy Italian dressing. It's one of my favorites, but I'd never before tried to make it at home. A quick search on Yahoo yielded between 758,000 and 6,820,000 returns, depending on how you phrase the question. Obviously, I'm not going to review every possible recipe, or even all of the minimum number offered, but I do examine the top dozen or so for common elements.

Gumbo! by Mariner, posted Nov 03, 2023

Never having lived in or near Louisiana, I can’t claim a heritage with, or even long familiarity with the defining Cajun dish, to wit: gumbo. Like most denizens of the Southern East Coast, my early experience with anything called gumbo came from a commercial soup can, and while it could be considered marginally edible, it was nowhere near the top of my list of favorite foods.

Gyro loaf by Mariner, posted Oct 18, 2023

In a city about 30 miles West of our home there is a locally-famous Greek restaurant. The restaurant prepares and serves fine examples of the kinds of Greek dishes you might expect, but the best things on their menu - in my humble opinion - are their specialty Greek pizzas.

Smoked Gouda/Pimento Spread by Mariner, posted Mar 14, 2023

We buy a lot of our staple goods from a well-known warehouse-style big box store; but occasionally, we also find oddities there, and we often try them out. We found a tasty smoked Gouda cheese and pimento spread there a couple of years back, and liked it well enough to have repeated the purchase several times since then. There is a problem, however: the packaging.

Hot Sauce by Mariner, posted Aug 25, 2022

Ever since I got into fermenting my own sauerkraut and pickles, I've wanted to try my hand at making my own hot pepper sauce. I'm particularly fond of Texas Pete® Original Hot Sauce, using it on a lot of different foods. I'm not vain enough to think I could duplicate that flavor and texture - I don't plan to use the additives that make that possible! - but I hope that I can produce a product that will make an acceptable substitute.

Copycat "D's sauce" by Mariner, posted Feb 12, 2022

I like fish. Fried, baked, blackened, or broiled. Never had any just plain boiled or grilled. I also like some of the sauces that go with fish. One of the sauces I like comes from a certain well-known fast-food fish restaurant.