Monthly Archives: March 2023

Pizza Crust 2

Posted on March 21, 2023 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

PIZZA CRUST

INGREDIENTS

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup water
2½ tablespoons vegetable oil
¾ teaspoon sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
2½ teaspoons active dry yeast
no-stick cooking spray

UTENSILS

bread maker
16-inch pizza pan

PREPARATION

Measure out the flour and set aside. Pour the water into the bread maker. If you measure the water before the flour, the flour will stick to the sides of the measuring cup. Not the end of the world, of course, but a minor disruption in The Force, nevertheless.

Add flour, water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast to the bread maker. Do not put the yeast directly on top of the salt. Salt is bad for yeast and yeast makes the dough rise. (“Ask not what your yeast can do for you. Ask what you can do for your yeast.”)

Set the timer or the menu on the bread maker to “Dough.” Wait the required time, probably a bit more than an hour. In the meantime preheat the oven to 400 degrees and liberally spray the pizza pan with no-stick spray. This will prevent the crust from forming a glue-like bond with the pan. Use this time to chop up any ingredients you’d like to add as toppings.

Take the dough out of the bread maker and roll it out until the dough covers the pizza pan. If you do not possess a rolling pin, any food can will do as long as it is at least 6 inches tall. It is best to spray the can or coat it with a thin layer of flour before spreading the dough.

After rolling, let the dough sit and rise for 30-to-60 minutes.

Add toppings as desired to the top of the dough. Place in the oven. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Ovens vary wildly in cooking times, so be sure to check after about 15 minutes and every few minutes after that. The cheese on top, a most likely ingredient for pizza, will go from golden brown to burnt in a few minutes.

TIDBITS

1) Egyptians used yeast more than 5,000 years ago.

2) Yeast is a tiny microorganism. My apologies to anyone named Yeast.

3) There are three types of yeast: baker’s, brewer’s, and nutritional.

4) The bread slicer was invented in 1912.

5) It’s getting quite difficult to buy bread that doesn’t have the evil high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient.

6) During General Grant’s siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1863, the city’s supplies got so low that bread was made out of peas. It got moldy quickly and was universally considered to be gross.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Food to Die For: Paul’s 365 Meals of Murder, Mayhem, and Mischief – February 25

Posted on March 20, 2023 by pauldelancey

February 25: This entree from Brunei celebratesbrate a drunken man breaking into a Pizza Hut(tm) on this day to fry wings

You love Pizza Hut(tm). Who does not? You love chicken.  Billions of people devour chicken. You want your chicken wings fried just the way you like it. But there’s that saying, “If you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.” Normally you’d fry your chicken at home. Alas and alack, you don’t can’t find your deep fryer or even a frying pan. Maybe you don’t have electricity or gas as you forgot to pay your utility bills.  Certainly no electricity would cause the chicken wings in your fridge to go bad. Or perhaps your synapses aren’t firing today.

What to do? Most people, at this point, would look harder for the deep fryer and the frying pan. Most folks would get on the phone and use their credit card to pay their utility bills. The rest of us would make our way to a restaurant or fast food joint and order chicken.

Not so for our plucky hero. He thought outside the box. He broke into a Pizza Hut and used their kitchen to fry his chicken wings. Alas, the enterprising fellow found himself being arrested by the police. I don’t know if he managed to eat his chicken wings. Now, he thinks inside the cell. Life can be hard.

The meal you should serve to commerate this day:  Honey Garlic Barbecue Pizza

If only the drunken chicken-wing lover had enough money and patience to fly halfway across the world to Brunei, where there is a Pizza Hut, he could have eaten honey garlic barbecue pizza. But luckily for you, I have a recipe for this dish.  It’s like the pizza served at the Pizza Hut in Brunei. And it has chicken as a topping! You can eat this tasty meal legally and in the comfort of your home.

HONEY GARLIC BARBECUE CHICKEN PIZZA

INGREDIENTS – SAUCE

1 teaspoon cornstarch
¾ cup water
3 garlic cloves
⅔ cup barbecue sauce
¼ cup honey
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 chicken breast
1 large bulb garlic (about 12 cloves)
½ tablespoon olive oil (1 more tablespoon later)

INGREDIENTS – ASSEMBLY

2 green onions
1 pre-made crust (store bought or your own)
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ pound grated mozzarella cheese
½ tablespoon sesame seeds

SPECIAL UTENSILS

roasting pan or baking pan
pizza pan
sonic obliterator

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION – SAUCE

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Add cornstarch and water to mixing bowl. Stir with whisk or fork until cornstarch dissolves. Mince 3 garlic cloves. Add cornstarch/water blend, minced garlic cloves, barbecue sauce, honey, and soy sauce to pot. Bring to boil at medium-high heat. Stir frequently. Lower heat to low-medium and simmer until sauce thickens. Remove and set aside. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Add chicken cubes to pot. Stir until sauce coats chicken cubes. Marinate until garlic bulbs in next step are done roasting.

Cut off top of garlic bulb. Drizzle ½ table spoon olive oil onto bulb. Place garlic bulb on roasting pan. Roast in oven at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until garlic starts to bubble. Remove and set aside.

PREPARATION – ASSEMBLY

While chicken marinates in sauce and garlic bulb roasts, dice green onions. Remove chicken with slotted spoon. (This makes spreading the sauce much easier.) Brush crust edge with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Brush sauce evenly sauce over crust except for the edge. Squeeze out the roasted garlic cloves from the garlic bulb. Cut roasted garlic cloves into 3 pieces each. Sprinkle roasted garlic pieces over sauce. Add chicken cubes evenly over pizza. Sprinkle cheese over pizza. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until cheese and crust brown. Sprinkle pizza with green onion and sesame seeds.

Serve to adoring quests. Zap unappreciative ones with sonic obliterator

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

Categories: cuisine, food to die for, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Food to Die For: Paul’s 365 Meals of Murder, Mayhem, and Mischief – March 15

Posted on March 19, 2023 by pauldelancey

March 15, Ides of March: A bunch of Roman Republic lovers gathered to stab Julius Caesar. Caesar was dictator or king in all but name and he was taking steps to make it official. The conspiring senators couldn’t countenance such a step. So they surrounded the tyrant and stabbed him to death.

This social stabbing might have caught on. Unfortunately for the cause of merry murdering, Caesar’s generals and friends hunted down the Senate’s assassins and killed many of them. Caesar’s great friend, Marc Anthony, and his heir, vanguished the remaining assassins’ armies. Much blood was shed. The Marc Anthony and Octavian had a tiff that just couldn’t be patched over. Things were said that couldn’t be taken back. Political ambitions burgeoned. After a spell, Octavian’s army and navy crushed those of Anthony and, in a cameo role as Marc’s lover, Cleopatra. Much more blood flowed.

So, Octavian became the Roman Empire’s first emperor. The Republic now existed in name only. So the murders’ act to preserve the Republic sealed its fate. A bit of irony there. Anyway Caesar’s mob assassination proved too closely tied to assasination. The civil wars this deed spawned also welded the idea of social slaughtering to bloody civil wars.

Thus, group murders fell out of fashion for a long, long. But the human spirit is irrepressible. Solitary murders and assassinations stepped out from the shadows of group killing and flourished. No longer did you have to be a member of an elitest clique, everybody could now take up a knife and stab some oppressor. So, maybe a little of the Senator love of a republic survived because of this bloody and fatal political statement. I like to think so. Besides group stabbing sare a no-no in times of pandemics.

The meal you should serve to commerate this day:  Caprese

This Italian entree has all it needs to celebrate the Ides of March. It’s Italian, as were Julius Caesar’s and his assassins. The mozzarella circles represent the togas worn by all those involved in the great event. Slicing the tomatoes represents stabbing  Julius Caesar. See? Combining history with eating can be quite fun.

CAPRESE

INGREDIENTS

1 pound mozzarella cheese
4 vine-ripened tomatoes
¼ teaspoon peppercorns (or black pepper)
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
⅓ cup fresh basil leaves
¼ teaspoon sea salt

Serves 4. Takes 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

There aren’t many ingredients in this dish, so fresh ones are especially important. Slice mozzarella into ¼” circles. Slice tomatoes ¼” thick. Grind peppercorns. Put alternating layers of mozzarella and tomato slices on serving plate until they are all used. Drizzle olive oil over everything and evenly sprinkle your creation with basil leaves, ground pepper, and sea salt.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

Categories: food to die for, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pigs in a Buttermilk Blanket

Posted on March 18, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Entree

PIGS IN A BUTTERMILK BLANKET

INGREDIENTS

1 16-ounce package jumbo buttermilk biscuit dough
1 cup grated Four-Mexican cheeses
8 turkey franks

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate the dough into eight pieces. Elongate each dough piece with a rolling pin dusted with flour or simply roll a turkey frank along the dough if any are remaining.

(You don’t have to use turkey franks instead of beef franks or buttermilk biscuits instead of plain ones in this dish. In keeping with this cookbook’s theme of “Cooking with what’s handy,” I used, well, what was handy. You can even use a 10-ounce package of dough, but it will mean thinner blankets for your pigs.)

Sprinkle grated cheese evenly among the eight dough pieces. Put a frank near one end of a dough piece and wrap the dough around the frank. Put this work of art on cookie sheet with the dough overlap on the bottom. Otherwise, the dough will bake apart and you will have “Pigs in a Buttermilk Boat.”

Bake in oven until biscuits are golden brown or about 10 to 15 minutes. This is a bad time to hibernate; monitor your Pigs in a Buttermilk Blanket to make sure they don’t burn or cook unevenly. It’s discouraging to have part of a baked dish be burnt on one side and doughy on the other. You might need to rotate the Pigs at least once. Heat escapes each time you open the oven, so in these cases you might need to cook the dish a minute longer. Remember, vigilance when baking.

TIDBITS

1) This tidbit was eliminated during editing.

2) April 24th is National Pigs in a Blanket Day.

3) This dish is also known somewhere as “Weiner Winks.”

4) The British make Pigs in a Blanket by wrapping up small sausages in bacon.

5) Footballs were originally made from pigs’ bladders. This sounded so gross, people took to calling them pigskins. These early footballs could very well have been the inspiration for air pumps. But footballs made from cows’ bladders would have been huge, while ones coming from chickens would have been tiny. Would Payton Manning have thrown all those touchdown passes if he had been tossing chicken bladders downfield?

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means – Traffic Signs

Posted on March 17, 2023 by pauldelancey

This photo was taken on the spot by me, your source for fast-breaking news.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: I Do Not Think It Means | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

Posted on March 16, 2023 by pauldelancey

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: I Do Not Think It Means | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

You Need to See a Kitten Scaring Flowers

Posted on March 15, 2023 by pauldelancey

Kitty tries to intimidate flowers. Will the flowers back down?

You Need to See, #28

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: you need to see | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Things I Did Today

Posted on March 14, 2023 by pauldelancey

I did seven things of varying importance today.

1) pulled weeds
2) cooked poutine for dinner
3) looked over my finances
4) diverted a comet that was on a path to collide into Earth. It would have ended all life on this planet.
5) did word-finds, an exercise for my eyes
6) worked on an adult (this adult artistic skill, not steaminess) coloring book. This was another eye exercise
7) took Number Two Son to the airport.

I think I’ve earned a good rest.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

Categories: things to see and do | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Peruvian Hamburger

Posted on March 13, 2023 by pauldelancey

Peruvian Entree

PERUVIAN HAMBURGER

INGREDIENTS – AJI AMARILLO SAUCE

1 tablespoon butter
2 stalks green onion
1 tablespoon aji amarillo pepper
1 tablespoon peanut oil (1 tablespoon more in PATTY)
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 tablespoon lime juice
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice

INGREDIENTS – PATTY

3 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons yellow onion
1 aji panca pepper
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 teaspoons parsley flakes
1½ pounds ground beef

6 lettuce leaves
6 hamburger buns

PREPARATION OF AJI AMARILLO SAUCE

Dice green onion. Melt butter in medium saucepan. Add green onion, aji amarillo pepper, and peanut oil. Sauté at medium-high heat for about 2 minutes or until all ingredients are well blended. Stir constantly.

Put above sautéed mixture in mixing bowl. Add mayonnaise, sour cream, ketchup, lime juice, sea salt, black pepper, and meat spice. Whisk together.

PREPARATION OF PATTY

Mince garlic cloves, yellow onion, and aji panca pepper. (Keep your aji panca pepper in TupperwareTM. Moths love aji peppers. Who knew they were such gourmands?) Melt butter in pan. Add garlic, yellow onion, aji panca pepper, and peanut oil. Sauté at medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes or until yellow onion softens. Stir constantly.

Combine above sautéed aji-panca-pepper mixture in mixing bowl with ground beef, and parsley flakes. Makes 6 patties.

Fry the patties until no pink color remains. Toast 6 buns. Coat the buns with the aji amarillo sauce. Add a lettuce leaf and patty and assemble the hamburger.

This is great. It is also spicy. Beverages such as milk go well with spicy foods. The milk coats the pain receptors in your mouth.

(This is important information if, for example, you’re in a restaurant in St. Louis with friends of yours from the Department of Economics from the University of Wisconsin and you’re dared to eat a truly spicy pepper.)

TIDBITS

1) Peru has a hamburger chain called Bembos.

2) If I ever get to Peru, I’m going to eat there. After that, I’m going to visit the ancient Incan ruins at Machu Picchu. Did you know there’s a McDonald’s there?

3) Pizarro and his Spanish conquistadors conquered the Incans of Peru in the 1520s.

4) Ancient Peru gave Europe and America the potato. Western Civilization gave Peru the hamburger.

5) Together these two great foods make up that wondrous meal burger and fries.

6) Without Peru and the Incans we could never say, “Would you like fries with that?”

7) So in a way, the Spanish arrival in Peru was a good thing.

8) At least on a culinary level.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Paul’s Awesome Spanish Phrase Book – Four Key Phrases

Posted on March 12, 2023 by pauldelancey

“Help, I’m going to Spain. I know I know no Spanish. What are the most import things I need to say?

Vlad the Impaler

 

Dear Vlad,

I can help you. Simply buy my handy Paul’s Awesome Spanish Phrase Book. However, if you’re landing in 20 minutes, may I suggest you commit to memory the following four phrases.

Yours truly,

Paul R. De Lancey, Ph. D.

 

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

Categories: wise words | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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