cuisine

Chestnut Stuffed Cabbage Leaves From Azerbaijan

Posted on March 20, 2022 by pauldelancey

Azerbaijani Entree

CHESTNUT STUFFED CABBAGE LEAVES

INGREDIENTS – STUFFED CABBAGE

¾ cup fresh cilantro
⅔ cup fresh dill
1 medium tomato
1 large onion
1 cup chopped chestnuts*
1 pound ground lamb or beef
⅓ cup rice
⅛ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 large cabbage head

INGREDIENTS – BROTH

1 tablespoon butter
2 teaspoons sugar
1¼ cups lamb or beef broth (Broth should match meat used above, if possible.)
1½ tablespoons vinegar

* = Chopped chestnuts can be found online.

Serves 6. Takes 2 hours.

PREPARATION – STUFFED CABBAGE

Dice cilantro, dill, and tomato. Mince onion. Add cilantro, dill, tomato, onion, chestnuts, lamb, rice, cinnamon, pepper, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended.

Cut off bottom of cabbage head. Cut out as much of the white, solid core as you can. (Doing these two steps will make peeling off leaves later much easier.)

Add enough water to cover cabbage head to large pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Carefully add cabbage head. Reduce heat to medium and continue to boil until leaves can be pulled back with a fork. Carefully remove cabbage. Drain. Wait until cabbage is cool enough to peel off the cabbages leaves.

Peel off cabbage leaf. Put 3 tablespoons lamb/chestnut mix from bowl in middle of cabbage leave. (The exact amount will vary with the changing sizes of the cabbage leaves.) Shape mix into a log, leaving 1½” uncovered along edges. Fold the short ends of the leaf to cover lamb/chestnut log. Then tightly roll leaf from the bottom. Repeat for remaining leaves save one. Reserve one leaf.

PREPARATION – BROTH

Melt butter in pan using low-medium heat. Stir enough to prevent bubbling, Remove from heat. Add sugar, butter, lamb broth, and vinegar to mixing bowl. Stir until well blended

Place reserved cabbage leaf in large pot. Add stuffed-cabbage logs to pan. Place them as closely as possible to each other to prevent unfolding. Slowly pour broth over cabbage logs. Place a lid over cabbage logs. (The lid should be a bit smaller than the pan so that it sits on the cabbage logs. (This also prevents unraveling.) Simmer at low heat for 45 minutes or until cabbage leaves are tender and the filling becomes tender.

TIDBITS

1) You can cook chestnuts in a pot.

2) You can cook them quite a lot.

3) You can cook them on a beach.

4) You can cook them with a peach.

5) You can cook them in an oven.

6) You can cook them with a coven.

7) But not one with witches.

8) For though they might grant riches.

9) They like their meat raw.

10) And that you can’t unsaw.

11) You can speed them in an electron collider.

12) Or something even much, much wider.

13) You can heat them with a torch.

14) You can heat them on a porch.

15) You can cook them in a house.

16) You can cook them for your spouse.

17) You can cook them while on a chair.

18) You can cook them everywhere.

 

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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Mauritian Napolitaines

Posted on March 17, 2022 by pauldelancey

Mauritian Dessert

SIMPLE NAPOLITAINES
(Sandwich Cookies)

INGREDIENTS

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups flour (3 more tablespoons later)
3 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons raspberry jam
2 9-ounce bottles pink cookie icing (Not cake icing)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater
1 cookie sheet
parchment paper
1½” cookie cutter (Must be a cookie cutter)
sonic obliterator

Makes 20 cookies. Takes 3 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 335 degrees. Add butter and 2 cups flour to large mixing bowl. Blend with electric beater set or medium until butter and flour form a dough ball. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons flour on flat surface. Roll out dough until it is about ⅓” thick. Cut out dough circles with 1½” cookie cutter. Make them as level and smooth as you can. (I cannot stress this enough. Smooth cookie sides will make proper icing much easier later.) Cover cookie sheets with parchment paper. Place dough circles on parchment paper.

Bake dough circles at 335 degrees for 20 minutes or until the middle of a circle is no longer soft when pressed. Don’t let the circles turn brown! They should remain pale. Gently life parchment paper with circles and let cool on a wire rack or plate. (Leave circles on parchment paper.)

Once circles have cooled completely, spread ½ teaspoon raspberry jam over a baked circle. Gently place another circle over the jam to make a cookie. Repeat until all circles have been used.

Put cookies on large plate. Do not let them touch each other. Pour icing from bottles over cookies. Make sure to pour icing over the edge of the cookie tops so that the icing will flow down and coat the sides of the cookies. Do this all in one go. Let sit until icing hardens completely.

This is a hard one to do perfectly. There’s a reason dessert chefs differ from the other chefs. So appreciate why some things, particularly these cookies, can be expensive. And for the insensitive oafs who give you guff about your cookies, zap them with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need their negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) Napolitaines look a lot like UFOs.

2) By the way, Napolitaines is pronounced Napolitaines.

3) I’m glad I cleared that up.

4) UFOs really do resemble Napolitaines. There’s a reason for that.

5) Having a successful space program brings enormous international prestige.

6) If you were to ask people what are the ten greatest things about America, 93.6% would say, “NASA.” The remaing 6.4% couldn’t find a No. 2 pencil and so, couldn’t fill out the questionaire.

7) So what do you if you want to develop a space program but simply do not possess the vast resources of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration?

8) Well, what do you if you want to make crab salad, but you haven’t the money to buy crabmeat?

9) Why, you purchase krabmeat, a crabmeat substitute. It’s made of various seafoods and costs much less than the real thing.

10) Similarly, if you wish to fling manmade objects into space, you send up something small. Dispense with lunar modules, the Hubble telescope, space stations or other enormously heavy gadgetry.

11) Fling Napolitaines from the Earth instead.

12) A batch of Napolitaines is easy to make. All you need is butter, flour, raspberry jam, and pink cookie icing.

13) While even the simplest of Hubble telescopes involve: miles of circuitry, rare metals, scads of computing power, and other complicated gizmos.

14) The Apollo Program required gigantic rockets, specialize fuel, more frigging circuitry, with all of its parts engineered with incredible precision, and a reinforced launching pad to hurl its lunar modules to well, the moon.

15) What does it take to fling Napolitaines into outer space?

16) A really big slingshot.

17) So that’s what thrifty Mauritius did. It slingshotted hundreds of Napolitaines into space. Some made it to the moon, some to Neptune, and some even exited the Solar System. However, many Napolitaines never left our atmosphere and orbit our planet a few dozen feet in the air. The cookies in this recipe, at that altitude, resemble alien space ships. Except for the color. Orbiting UFOs are grey or off white. Napolitaines are pink. Now you know.

 

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., and travel advisor

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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French Jambon Beurre

Posted on March 14, 2022 by pauldelancey

French Entree

JAMBON BEURRE

INGREDIENTS

1 24″-baguette (ficelle style, if you can find it)
¼ cup salted butter, softened
9 ounces ham, sliced
9 ounces Gruyère or Emmental cheese (optional)

Serves 3. Takes 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut baguette open lengthwise almost all the way through. Open baguette. Spread butter evenly on top and bottom. Place ham evenly along baguette bottom. Distribute cheese, if used, evenly on top of ham. Close and press baguette. Divide into 3 8″-long sandwiches.

TIDBITS

1) In 1972, Neil Diamond recorded the song, “Song Sung Blue.” It is a great song and has remained justly popular for 50 years.

2) If you substitute the words “Jambon Beurre” for “Song Sung Blue” you still have a truly great song. Okay, sing the song in your head with the new lyrics. See? Ya see? The song’s still superb.

3) Jambon Beurre is a simple, yet great sandwich. French sandwich lovers have eaten them for many, many years.

4) How many?

5) I don’t know.

6) But I do know that the French devoured a little over a billion jambon beurres in 2013.

7) That’s not current. That’s from about nine years ago, as of press time.

8) But it takes a long time to count that high. If a French woman, say Farine du Ble were to count one such sandwich every second, it would take her about 33 years to complete the tally. Clearly, the task is more than a one-woman job.

10) Perhaps France could eliminate all unemployment by hiring all those without jobs to count the jambon beurres being consumed. In February, 2022 had 2,977,000 out of work people. If these people were hired by the state to count a billion jambon beurres and took ten seconds to count each sandwich, it would take them about an hour. Maybe longer if the counting involved travel.

11) Now you know how important arithmetic can be.

 

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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Venezuelan Pepito Sandwich

Posted on March 11, 2022 by pauldelancey

Venezuelan Entree

PEPITO SANDWICH

INGREDIENTS – STEAK

1 pound steaks, skirt, flank, or ribeye
½ tablespoon minced garlic
¾ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

INGREDIENTS – SANDWICHES

4 sandwiches rolls, hoagies
1 cup guasacaca (See previous recipe)
1 cup lettuce, shredded
⅓ cup carrots, shredded
⅓ cup Parmesan cheese
1 tomato
½ cup potato sticks
ketchup (optional)
mayonnaise (optional)

Serves 4. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION – STEAK

Cut steak into strips ½” wide. Add steak strips, garlic, and salt to mixing bowl. Rub garlic and salt into steak strips. Add seasoned steak strips and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 3 minutes or until strips brown. Stir frequently. Add Worcestershire sauce. Sauté for an additional 3 minutes. Stir frequently. Remove from heat.

PREPARATION – SANDWICHES

Split sandwich rolls in half. Spread guasacaca on all halves. Divide shredded lettuce and carrot evenly between the bottom roll halves. Top lettuce with carrot. Place steak strips on carrot. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on carrot. Cut tomato into 8 slices. Put 2 tomato slices on each sandwich. Sprinkle potato sticks on tomato slices. Spread ketchup and mayonnaise, if desired, on bun tops. Assemble sandwich.

TIDBITS

1) Little Pepe was known throughout Venezuela for wearing sandals and being clumsy. One day, for reasons that are lost to history, Pepe carried all the ingredients to a post office. As he opened the door, Pepe dropped guasacaca on his left big toe and all the other ingredients on the right big toe. “Whoa,” said the postmaster, “the same food on your toes would look delicious between two sandwich rolls. And so the Pepe Toe sandwich was born. Soon, it shortened to the Pepito Sandwich.

 

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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Ukrainian Syrniki (Cheese Pancakes)

Posted on March 8, 2022 by pauldelancey

Ukrainian Breakfast

SYRNIKI
(Cheese Pancakes)

INGREDIENTS

2 eggs
1 pound farmers’ cheese or cottage cheese
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup flour (5 tablespoons more later)
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup raisins (optional)
3 tablespoons flour (2½ tablespoons more later)
2 tablespoons flour
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil (½ tablespoon per batch)
3 tablespoons sour cream (optional)
1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

Serves 4. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add eggs to mixing bowl. Beat eggs well with whisk. Add cheese. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add baking powder, ½ cup flour, salt, and sugar. Mix with whisk until batter is well blended. Fold in raisins.

Spread 3 tablespoons flour over flat surface. Ladle batter evenly oven flour. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons flour on batter.

Add ½ tablespoon vegetable oil to large pan. Heat oil at medium heat until a bit of batter begins to dance. Use spatula to carefully add 2″ square pieces of flour-covered batter. (Don’t let them touch each other. You might need to cook in batches.) Cook for 2 minutes per side or until brown all over. Repeat for each batch. If desired, garnish with sour cream or confectioners’ sugar.

TIDBITS

1) This is the first time my tidbits have not been funny. Twelve days before writing this, Putin ordered a unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. This is an existential war for the defenders. I so wish for better days for Ukraine. The nation’s flag is on the left. The country’s symbol, the sunflower, is on the right.

 

 

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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Polish Chicken Soup (Rosół)

Posted on March 5, 2022 by pauldelancey

Polish Soup

CHICKEN SOUP
(Rosół)

INGREDIENTS

4 carrots
1 celery root or 3 celery stalks
2 parsnips
1 leek
2 medium yellow onions
¼ head Savoy cabbage or regular cabbage
3½ pounds chicken parts with bone in
5 allspice berries, aka allspice seeds
3 cloves
6 peppercorns
2 teaspoons salt
4 quarts water or enough to cover vegetables and chicken in pot
2 tablespoon fresh parsley
½ pound thin egg noodles or thin regular noodles

SPECIAL UTENSILS

8-quart pot or 2 4-quart pots

Serves 16. (This recipe is meant for many people. Feel to cut into in half or more.) Takes 3 hours.

PREPARATION

Peel carrots, celery root, and parsnips. Trim leek; keep only white and light-green parts. Leave onions unpeeled and add them to pan. Heat at medium-high heat until you get burn marks. (The burned yellow skins help color the broth.)

Add chicken parts, allspice, cloves, peppercorns, salt, cabbage, carrots, celery root, onions, parsnips, and leek to large pot. Fill pot with enough water to cover everything. Simmer at low heat for 2 hours 30 minutes or until chicken parts are tender and fall off the bone.. Stir enough to prevent burning. Skim off foam as it accumulates on surface to keep the broth clear.

Remove chicken parts, carrots, celery root, parsnips, leek, cabbage, and onions from broth. Tear meat from each chicken part into 4 or more pieces. Cut each cabbage, carrot, celery root, leek, and parsnip into 8 pieces. Remove skins and roots from onions. Cut each onion into 4 pieces. Return all of these ingredients to broth.

About 15 minutes before soup is ready, cook noodles according to instructions on package. Ladle broth with chicken and veggies into serving bowls. Add equal amounts of noodles to each bowl. Dice parsley. Garnish soup with parsley.
TIDBITS

1) People often ask me how much of each ingredient it would take for to make a recipe for everybody in an entire down. Here’s what it would look like for Poway, my fair city.

Ingredients for FEED ALL OF POWAY CHICKEN SOUP

12,141 carrots
3,035 celery roots
6,071 parsnips
3,035 leeks
759 heads cabbage
6,071 yellow onions
10,623 pounds chicken parts
15,176 allspice berries
6,071 cloves
18,212 peppercorns
126 cups salt

2) That’s a lot of food. Buy in bulk.

3) That’s a lot of food to fit in one car. Or even a van. You might want to organize a convoy of vans.

4) But tiny hatchbacks such as the Fit(tm) carry a lot in the back,

5) It’s deceiving I know, but that car can carry of groceries, especially you fold down the rear seats.

6) Anyway, it’s likely no supermarkets, especially the neighborhood ma-and-pa ones have 6,071 parsnips on hand.

7) Nor even the big box stores such as Costco(tm) could fill your ingredients list. You’ll have to go to multiple big stores.

8) All at once. If people hear that all the celery roots, parsnips, and leeks have been cleared out of one store, mass hysteria will ensue. People will start a celery root, parsnip, and leek run the lights of which have never been seen.

9) You and your Feed All Of Poway Chicken Soup pals will have to hit all big box stores at one. You will have to do this with military precision.

10) But then there will be no veggies and roots anywhere in your county. News of this shortage will travel rapidly. Shortages will occur across the land. Celery root-parsnip-and leek riots will erupt across the nation. Police will loose control. Our country will slide into anarchy. Vegetable-and-root lacking people will foment revolution. So on second thought, making this recipe for an entire city is probably not to best thing to do. And it would take a long time to cook.

 

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, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Venezuelan Guasacaca

Posted on March 2, 2022 by pauldelancey

Venezuelan Appetizer

GUASACACA

INGREDIENTS

3 avocados
1 green chile
2 garlic cloves
⅓ cup fresh cilantro
½ cup fresh parsley
1½ tablespoons lime juice
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
2½ tablespoons white vinegar

SPECIAL UTENSIL

food processor

Serves 8. Takes 15 minutes.

PREPARATION

Peel and seed avocados and green chile. Add all ingredients to food processor. Blend until you get the desired consistency. Store in a Mason jar in the refrigerator.

TIDBITS

1) Guasacaca, wait, wait, wait! How the heck does my spell checker know the word “Guasacaca?”

2) Does everybody in America and the rest of the English speaking world know what guasacaca is? Do people know where to find guasacaca in their supermarket? Or if not, do they ask the employees for help in finding it. Hint: it’s usually in aisle 7A.

3) Oh great, just great I saved this file to look up something. Now that I’ve come back, the spell checker doesn’t recognize the word “guasacaca” anymore. I tell you, there are dark forces lurking in every hidden crevice of our world.

4) Well now, I don’t have much space left to expound on how to find gusacacaca if you don’t feel like making it. Guasacaca resides in vast pools in the Earth’s mantle. It then gradually and gently percolates upward and through Earth’s crust in much the same way coffee percolates.

5) If you’re lucky enough to live above subterranean pools of guasacaca, then all you have to do is go to a guasacaca lake, scoop some up with a bucket, and take it home. However, if you reside above great pools of lava, then you will suffer through endless cycles of volcanoes and lava flows. Choose the location of your home wisely.

 

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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Finnish Hot Dog Sauce (Nakkikastike)

Posted on February 27, 2022 by pauldelancey

Finnish Entree

HOT DOG SAUCE
(Nakkikastike)

INGREDIENTS

1 pound hot dogs or sausages
1 medium onion
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons flour
1¾ cups beef broth
¾ cup cream
3 tablespoons ketchup
½ teaspoon pepper

Serves 4. Takes 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut hot dogs into circles ½” thick. Dice onion. Add onion and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add hot-dog circles. Stir until well blended. Sauté for 3 minutes or until hot-dog slices brown.

Lower heat to medium. Add flour. Fry until flour turns browns. Mix until well blended. Add beef broth. Stir with whisk until there are no lumps. Bring to boil using medium-high heat. Stir frequently. Add cream, ketchup, and pepper. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Goes well with mashed potatoes.

TIDBITS

1) Culinary historians tell us this Finnish dish actually came from China some thousands of years ago and that it was originally called Yin Yang. Indeed, culinary philosophers maintain that Yin Yang is a Chinese philosophical concept that describes how apparently opposite forces may actually be complementary and interconnected in the culinary world. Later Chinese philosophers extended this concept to the entire natural world. Now everybody, not just chefs, can have big thinks about how things fit together.

2) Just so you know, it’s extremely windy outside my window.

3) For some 217 years, 9 months, and 26 days, Chinese debated on what were the grand universal twin powers from which flowed all opposite and complementary forces. Then Chef Tai Chi Pei piped up, “The twin universal powers are Hot Dog Sauce and Mashed Potatoes.” All the philosophers agreed at once. It’s just one of things that had been hard to see, but became incredibly obvious once presented. This revolutionary idea made its way to Finland via the Silk Road. Inner-truth seeking Finnish chefs gave culinary shape to this philosophy with this dish. Now you know.

 

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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Egyptian Roz Bel Laban

Posted on February 24, 2022 by pauldelancey

Egyptian Dessert

ROZ BEL LABAN

INGREDIENTS

1 cup rice
2¼ cups water
3½ cups whole milk
¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon orange blossom water or vanilla
½ teaspoon rose water, orange blossom water, or vanilla
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Serves 6. Takes 1 hours 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add rice and water to pot, Set heat to low-medium and simmer for 12 minutes. Stir frequently to prevent burning. (Always, in this recipe, add water or milk if the liquid in the pot dries up.)

While rice simmers, add milk and sugar to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add to pot. Simmer at medium heat for 12 minutes or until mixture starts to thicken. Stir constantly. Add allspice, orange blossom water, and rose water. Simmer at medium heat. Stir constantly until mixture has thickened and rices softens and becomes creamy. Gently spoon rice mixture into individual serving bowls. Chill in refrigerator for 1 hour or until pudding sets. Sprinkle cinnamon over each bowl.

TIDBITS

1) Roz Augureau’s sparkling eyes and beautiful face bedazzled men everywhere. So much so that men made rash decisions. In 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II and President Poincare attended a society ball at the same time as Roz. The German and French leaders both professed undying love for her. Neither ruler would clear the field for the belle Roz. Words were said. Poincare slapped Wilhelm. The Kaiser had the choice of weapons. If only he had picked pistols, instead of millions of soldiers as the duelllng weapons, the world would have been spared the horrors of the First World War.

2) But he didn’t and anyway, hindsight is 20/20. However, the French could forgive Roz Augureau for starting the War to End All Wars. Afier all, “L’amour, toujours l’amour.” They could not ignore, however, her effect on French cuisine. Every time the Belle Roz sashayed by restaurants, the besotted chefs made mistakes. It all came to a head in 1915 when the very sight of Roz so charmed the chef making this very dish, that he unwittingly substituted sardine water for vanilla. This atrocity outraged the French nation. What, if anything, was France fighting for if not for the purity of its cuisine? So, France passed a law banning the belle Roz from walking by any kitchen. In honor of this law, Le Monde called this dish, “Roz Belle La Ban.” Later this became, Roz Bel Laban.

 

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Smoked Burgers

Posted on February 21, 2022 by pauldelancey

American Entree

SMOKED BURGERS

INGREDIENTS

1½ pounds ground beef
2 teaspoons seasonings (garlic salt, pepper, etc.)
4 hamburger buns
optional toppings (cheese, lettuce, sliced onions, ketchup, etc.)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

smoker
electric thermometer
wood chips (hickory or mesquite)

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes for rare to 2 hours for well done. This time includes preheating the smoker. Times vary with smokers.

PREPARATION

Preheat smoker to 230 degrees. Add wood chips to smoker. While smoker heats, add ground beef and seasonings to mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended. Form beef into 4 patties. Patties should be about 1″ thick. Make an small indentation in middle of patties. (This helps keep the juices in the patties.)

Place burgers directly on smoker racks. Cook until internal temperature of burgers reaches your desired level of doneness. (Rare = 120 degrees, medium = 140 degrees, well done = 160 degrees.) There is so need to flip patties. Toast buns. Assemble bottom buns, smoked patties, toppings, and top buns.

TIDBITS

1) There are many ways to determine direction. The most obvious one is the compass. It however, don’t work well if you’re near one of the Earth’s magnetic poles. They also become completely useless when you forget to bring one. Then you and your friend, Bart, find yourself completely lost at the northern magnetic pole. Bart finally realizes he had a compass with him all the time. But now his compass doesn’t work because, well you’re at a magnetic pole.

2) Bart pipes up, “Say, moss grows on the north side of trees. That’s how we’ll find our direction.” Not quite, moss mostly grows on the north side. And there are no trees at the North Magnetic Pole. You resolve there and then to never again hike the Everglades with Bart.

3) If only you had had lettuce, onion, tomato, and a smoked hamburger patty. The veggies will always point to the southwest and the patty to the northeast. Now you know.

 

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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