Easiest way to display post archives in category-then-alphabetical order?

Question

I've got a buddy who's trying to organize his recipe blog and would love to have an archive page that displays his recipes broken up by broad subject areas (read: categories) and then have the recipes listed alphabetically under each section (similar to this).

Do I need to go the custom query route, or is there a better way, or, even easier, a plugin with shortcode support? (My Google Fu is failing me, as is my WP.org Fu as well. I swear I've seen something like this before but I can't seem to find anything along these lines.)

Answer 1

I see plugins that get close, or may once have done what you want, but nothing recently updated or proven to work (e.g. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/azindex/). A custom query is probably the way to go for now... or a shortcode that does a custom query :) You've inspired me to write a plugin, though.

Answer 2

I found a plugin that does pretty much exactly what I need: List Category Posts. Just throw in a few shortcodes under some H3's and I'm golden.

grin