Learning to cook Belgian Style

I am reading Belgian recipes and tried one last night. A Belgian beer stew. My cooking style is to read a few versions of a recipe, decide what it is supposed to taste like and then cook it in my shortcut style. It was pretty good. It was to be served over rice or noodles, but I am trying out using various whole grains so I served it with cooked bulgur wheat. Pretty good. I used less fat and meat than the recipes called for, but one recipe even said to skim off extra fat before serving. My recipe had no extra fat so that step was saved.