What to Cook This Weekend – Eggs Benedict, Balela, Borscht, Beef Stroganoff

My ideas for you for what to cook this weekend include a classic eggs Benedict on an English muffin with ham, poached eggs and hollandaise, a balela salad recipe for a warm chickpea salad with a crunchy salad piled on top, a warming bowl of my grandmother’s borscht, and a richly spiced beef Stroganoff or a hearty beef stew if you prefer.

My other suggestions as to what to cook this weekend include recipes for a modern take on the traditional Mexican huevos rancheros or ranch eggs for breakfast, a comforting cauliflower cabbage potato soup recipe that tastes creamy even if it doesn’t contain any cream, and a Cambodian feast that includes fish amok.

But before I share my suggestions for what to cook this weekend, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee.

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Now let me share my suggestions for what to cook this weekend.

What to Cook This Weekend – Eggs Benedict, Balela Salad, Borscht and Beef Stroganoff

For What to Cook this Weekend, we’re sharing suggestions for meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner for Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday Breakfast – Mexican Huevos Rancheros Recipe

It’s been a while since we’ve enjoyed a Mexican breakfast, so kicking off my ideas for what to cook this weekend is Terence’s huevos rancheros recipe today for a more contemporary take on the traditional Mexican ranch eggs.

With my husband’s modern reinterpretation of this classic Mexican breakfast eggs dish, you have a poached egg rather than fried eggs and get a little velvety egg yolk, the chilli bite of the spicy salsa, a little crunch from the corn ‘powder’, and the robustness of the refried beans with each mouthful.

Conceived during the first year of our Weekend Eggs recipe series on quintessential breakfast eggs dishes from around the world, the dish still looks and feels contemporary and tastes delicious.

Helpfully, Terence has a little video on how to make huevos rancheros in the post below. He made the video back in 2010 in our Mexico City kitchen on the yearlong grand tour of the world that launched Grantourismo. Despite being 13 years old, it doesn’t show its age and is still a cool little cooking video.

Mexican Huevos Rancheros Recipe for a Contemporary Take on Traditional Mexican Ranch Eggs

Saturday Lunch – Cauliflower Cabbage Potato Soup Recipe

We’ve got a cauliflower in the fridge that needs to be used up, so next on my plan for what to cook this weekend is this easy cauliflower cabbage potato soup recipe. It makes a creamy vegetable soup that’s incredibly rich and comforting.

You could enjoyably slurp it as is on a chilly winter or autumn/fall evening, dunking toast into the silky broth, or add texture and make it a bit fancy by sprinkling crushed homemade croutons, fresh fragrant dill sprigs, and cracked black pepper on top

This soup tastes so rich and creamy that you’d think there was cream in it – there isn’t! – and while you could happily tuck into a bowl on the sofa in your PJs on a Sunday night (which is what I’m planning on doing tonight), you could also make it a bit fancy.

In fact, my inspiration for this soup was a velvety cauliflower soup that Terence used to make for dinner parties years ago. He’d often begin a multi-course menu with a rich cauliflower soup served in a shot glass, topped with a dollop of cream, a spoonful of caviar, and a sprinkle of finely-sliced chives or micro-herbs.

Cauliflower Cabbage Potato Soup Recipe for a Comforting Creamy Vegetable Soup

Saturday Dinner – Cambodian Fish Amok

‘Amok’ means to steam in banana leaves in Khmer and ‘trei’ is fish, and this refined dish was a Royal Khmer specialty that’s now eaten by everyone and may well have dated back to the Khmer Empire.

Our recipe is very traditional, made to a classic recipe from an older generation of cooks who believe that if it’s not properly steamed, it’s not amok trei, it’s a fish curry.

As a Cambodian meal consists of a few dishes with steamed rice, I might also make some Cambodian fried spring rolls, perhaps a pot of this sour beef soup with morning glory and maybe a zingy Cambodian salad.

If none of those take your fancy, we have dozens of Cambodian recipes here, from starters, soups and salads to stir-fries, fried rice dishes and curries, as well as Cambodian desserts.

Cambodian Fish Amok Recipe for an Authentic Steamed Fish Curry in the Old Style

Sunday Breakfast – Eggs Benedict Recipe

I’ve dug deep into the Grantourismo recipe archives for my suggestion for what to cook this weekend for Sunday breakfast and unearthed this eggs Benedict recipe. How could Terence have made anything else for the New York City edition of our Weekend Eggs series?

Eggs Benedict must by the most quintessential New York City breakfast eggs dish. Well it was when we settled into the city for two weeks on the global grand tour that launched this site. Back then, an eggs Bennie was to New Yorkers what smashed avocado on toast was to Australians.

At the time, the most popular item on any New York café breakfast or brunch menu was eggs Benedict: a toasted English muffin, some good ham (often from Canada), soft-poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, perhaps some chives for colour, and a slightly peppery counterpoint flavour.

Terence has lots of tips on how to make hollandaise sauce, one of the mother sauces of French cooking, in the post, below. Learning to make Hollandaise sauce gives you skills that will serve you well.

Eggs Benedict Recipe for New York City Edition of Weekend Eggs from Around the World

Sunday Lunch – Balela Salad Recipe

If you’ve made and enjoyed our hummus balila recipe then you’re going to love this balela salad recipe for a warm chickpea salad of creamy hummus balila textured with a fragrant crunchy Arabic salad piled on top. It’s one of my favourite Middle Eastern recipes.

It’s deliciously addictive, one of our best hummus recipes and one of our best canned beans recipes if you’re looking for budget-friendly meals during these increasingly challenging times.

If you’re not familiar with Middle Eastern food and only know the classic hummus or hummus bi-tahina – ‘hummus’ is ‘chickpeas’ in Arabic, ‘tahina’ is ‘tahini’ and it’s a chickpea and tahini dip – then know there’s a whole huge world of hummus and we’ll be posting more hummus recipes.

While hummus balila is a traditional breakfast dish across the Middle East, I like this balela salad for a shared lunch or dinner as part of a mezze spread of starters or sides, alongside baba ganoush, fattoush and beef kofta and the like.

If you enjoy this, try its Turkish cousin, Antalya piyaz, a white bean salad of creamy, soupy white beans that are topped with salad and customarily eaten with the Turkish bread called pide and Turkish köfte or meatballs.

Balela Salad Recipe for a Delicious Warm Chickpea Salad from the Middle East

Sunday Dinner – My Family’s Recipes for Borscht, Beef Stroganoff and Beef Stew

For my final suggestion for what to cook this weekend, I have not one recipe but three recipes if you’d like to join me in cooking up a feast of my family recipes, starting with my Russian-Ukrainian grandmother’s borscht.

This borscht recipe makes the hearty home-cooked soup of my childhood that my baboushka used to make. The beetroot-driven vegetable soup is served with sour cream and dill and is a filling meal in itself. We’d eat it for lunch or dinner the first night then breakfast the next day.

This Russian Borscht Recipe Makes the Hearty Home-Cooked Soup of my Childhood

As for the main course to follow, I can’t decide between beef Stroganoff or beef stew, so let me share links to both for you. My richly spiced beef Stroganoff recipe is based on a combination of my family recipe, a beef Stroganoff I fell in love with in Moscow many years ago, and the earliest documented beef Stroganoff recipes.

It’s one of my best Stroganoff recipes but I also have recipes for chicken Stroganoff, mushroom Stroganoff, meatball Stroganoff and pork Stroganoff if you’re not eating beef. It’s wonderfully warming with mashed potatoes although I also like the idea of crispy shoestring fries, the original Stroganoff side.

If you are eating beef but you’re not a fan of beef Strog, how about my beef stew recipe? This traditional recipe makes solyanka, a hearty stew or heavy soup. Invented to use leftovers, it’s a one-pot dish that is filling and comforting. I’m undecided about which dish I’ll make tomorrow night, but either way, I’ll serve a classic garden salad on the side.

Authentic Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from a Saint Petersburg Palace Kitchen

Please do let us know in the comments section below if you make any of our ideas for what to cook this weekend as we always love to hear how our recipes turn out for you.