cuisine

Hibiscus Tea (Jus de Bissap)

Posted on December 15, 2016 by pauldelancey

Malian Appetizer

HIBISCUS TEA
(Jus de Bissap)

INGREDIENTShibiscustea

1 cup dried hibiscus flowers
6 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon fresh mint leaves

SPECIAL UTENSIL

colander

Makes 4½ cups. Takes 30 minutes

PREPARATION

Add water to lst large pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Add hibiscus flowers Reduce heat to medium-high. Boil for 20 minutes or until water becomes aromatic and turns dark red. Strain red liquid through colander into 2nd large pot. Add sugar to red liquid. Stir with whisk or fork until sugar dissolves. Add vanilla extract. Stir with whisk or fork. Pour into tea cups. Garnish with mint leaves just before serving. Put tea in refrigerator, if you wish to serve it cold.

TIDBITS

1) Being buried by an avalanche is not fun, whether it happens in Switzerland or in the Saharan country of Mali.

2) Burial by avalanche is really, really dangerous. How dangerous? Really, really, really dangerous.

3) The downside of being buried in avalanche is death. See? Dangerous.

4) Legend has St. Bernard dogs seeeking–spelled with two “e”s outside of Switzerland–out avalanche victims and giving them brandy from a keg. What really happens is that rescue camels patrol the Saharan Dessert looking for victims of sand-dune avalanches. It can get cold under a mound of sand. The Sun’s heat can’t penetrate it. Neither can oxygen.

5) This why Malian rescues camels are proficient in CPR. After restoring the human’s breathing and heart beat, the camels serve the unlucky one a nice, hot cup of hibiscus tea. This wonderful restorative never fails, even with snow victims. The ever efficient Swiss have already tested this.

6) Indeed rescue camels are scheduled to start patrolling the Swiss Alps in late December. This will make cross-country skiing much safer. The Swiss Tourist Board expects a 37% increase in tourism.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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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Shrimp And Grits

Posted on December 14, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Entree

SHRIMP AND GRITS

INGREDIENTSshrimpandgrits

1 cup chicken broth
¾ cup milk
2½ cups water
1 cup grits
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1¾ cups grated Cheddar cheese
1 garlic clove
4 stalks green onions
5 bacon strips
1½ pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
1½ tablespoons lemon juice

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add chicken broth, milk, and water to large pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Add grits gradually, stirring with whisk until no lumps exist. Add pepper and salt. Reduce heat to warm. Simmer to 10-to-20 minutes or until grits become tender and all the water has been absorbed. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat and add butter and Cheddar cheese. Blend in cheese and butter with fork. Cover.

While liquid boils and grits become tender, mince garlic and dice green onions. Chop bacon into ½” squares. Add bacon squares to pan. Cook at medium-high heat for 3-to-5 minutes or until bacon becomes crispy, turning them over at least 1 time. Remove bacon and place on paper towel. Keep bacon grease in pan.

Add shrimp to pan. Sauté shrimp for 3 minutes at medium heat or until they start to turn pink or orange. (Don’t overcook shrimp. It will get mushy.) Add lemon juice. garlic, and green onion. Stir quickly until shrimp is well coated with garlic and green onion. Remove from heat.

Ladle grits into bowls. Top with shrimp and garlic/green onion/lemon juice. Sprinkle with bacon squares.

TIDBITS

1) It seems hard to believe now, but shrimp portraits were once quite popular in America during the late nineteenth century.

2) Darned difficult. I mean, why?

3) Okay, to understand phenomenon, one simply must read, Dr. Amos Keeto’s enthralling work, “Amazing Fads of the Gilded Age,” Garlic Press, Paducah, Kentucky, 1933.

4) According to Dr. Keeto, horse racing was incredibly popular in the 1890s. People with too much money, having bought up anything of any value in America, turned to gambling. They wouldn’t bet on baseball. Ordinary folk did that.

5) So the filthy rich, so called because oil from their wells constantly spurted onto their clothes, would clean up and go the race tracks to wager on horses, the sport of kings.

6) Everything went well. The had fun playing the horses. They lost vast sums, of course, but they had vast sum to lose. The race course owners became quite wealthy as well. They purchased gigantic mansions and went on railroad buying sprees. The Race Track magnate, Silas Brunswick, even bought BrusselsSproutsTM for $250,000 after it came out with the BS PadTM.

7) The BS Pad, a precursor to iPhonesTM, tablets, and the such, consisted of two tin cans tied together with a string, an abacus, and a sketch pad. Improvements have been made since then. Nevertheless, it was all new back then and the sexy BS was all the rage

8) But the craze stopped a scant year later when all of a sudden shouting became socially acceptable once more.

9) Then horse racing died out. On May 5, 1897, the swiftest horses gathered for the prestigious Mississippi Derby in Biloxi. Society’s elite bet over a million on the horses. The favorites were Southern Boil and Sandstorm.

10) People still debate what happened. As the horses turned the corner to enter the final stretch, an enormous fog rolled into. When the fog had lifted, all of the horses were gone. Everyone.

11) Where had they gone? Some speculated that the horses had gone to the same parallel universe that orphan socks go to when placed in a dryer. Some folks dispute this, noting electric dryers weren’t invented back then. The proponents counter, “Where you there, na, na, na, na, poo, poo?”

12) Some folks say that a mare in heat passed by the track and that time and the stallions merely left the race to chase after her. Still others maintain mass spontaneous combustion claimed all the horses, ignoring the fact that no explosions were ever heard. I mean, really.

13) We’ll never know what happened to the race horses. The race-track owner claiming that since no horse crossed the finished line, paid off none of the bets. This defiant act angered the wealthy bettors. Horse racing rapidly fell out of favor.

14) Fortunately, the crowd spied a cocktail of shrimp–you know, like a pod of whales–swimming off shore, and fast! An energetic entrepreneur, his name is lost to history, improvised a shrimp race course. By heavens, the event was fun. Shrimp racing became the most popular social event of the 1890s.

15) Breeding shrimp for speed became a lucrative business. Wealthy owners hired artists to paint their prize shrimps. These artists loved to eat grits. Hence, shrimp and grits. There you go.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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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Beninese Peanut Sauce

Posted on December 12, 2016 by pauldelancey

Beninese Appetizer

PEANUT SAUCE

INGREDIENTSpeanutsauce

1 small tomato
1 small onion
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1½ tablespoons chili powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cube MaggiTM beef bouillon*
1 cup water
10 tablespoons smooth peanut butter

* = While other boullion cubes work fine, Maggi’s are incredibly popular in Africa.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

Makes 1½ cups. Takes 35 minutes.

PREPARATION

Puree tomato in blender. Mince onion. Add onion and peanut oil to pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add tomato puree, chili powder, and salt. Reduce heat to low and sauté for 3 minutes. Stir frequently.

Crush boullion cube. (This makes it dissolve quicker.) Add bouillon and water. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Add peanut butter. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 15 minutes or until sauces thickens to your liking. Stir frequently. This is served in Benin with boiled yam. It also goes well with rice.

TIDBITS

1) Peanut Sauce is, of course, an anagram for Tuna Ape Cues. Queen Mary I hated the theater, thinking it immoral. She tried fervently to ban it altogether, but succeeded only in driving theater going underground. People attended ribald plays in people’s attics where such animalistic passions such as hand holding and improv comedy took place. Mary I could not abide this licentiousness, so she imposed hateful regulations, such as having all roles played by gorillas holding tuna.

2) It’s important to realize that Joe Ape’s vocabulary was, and still is, quite limited, making line memorization challenging. And as with humans, line retention goes down while holding tuna. So, stage hands constantly cued the tuna holding apes. Hence, “Tuna Ape Cues.” The next queen, Elizabeth permitted human actors. To honor his new patron, Shakespeare, playwright, chef, and anagrammatist, turned Tuna Apes Cues into Peanut Sauce. His peanut sauce was tasty. What luck!

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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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Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Golumkies)

Posted on December 10, 2016 by pauldelancey

Polish Entree

STUFFED CABBAGE ROLLS
(Golumkies)

INGREDIENTSstuffedcabbage

1 medium cabbage head
½ cup rice
3 garlic cloves
1 small onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 egg
1 pound ground beef
½ pound ground pork
¼ teaspoon sweet basil or basil
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon parsley
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon sugar
1½ cups tomato sauce
½ cup diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar or vinegar

SPECIAL UTENSILS

9″ x 13″ casserole dish
8-quart pot
x-ray vision
kitchen scissors

Makes 12 cabbage rolls. Takes 2 hours.

PREPARATION

Add cabbage head to 8-quart pot. Add enough water to cover cabbage. Bring to boil using high heat. Boil for 15 minutes or until leaves are soft and pliable enough to be removed easily. Remove cabbage from pot. Let sit until leaves are cool enough to be removed by hand. Drain cabbage. Remove and reserve damaged outer leaves. Carefully remove 12 leaves. Snip off the top part of the large spines on the cabbage leaves. This will make folding the cabbage rolls easier.

While cabbage boils, cook rice according to instructions on package. Dice garlic and onion. Add garlic, onion, and olive oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until garlic and onion soften. Beat egg in small bowl with whisk.

Add garlic, onion, rice, egg, ground beef, ground pork, sweet basil, paprika, parsley, and pepper to large mixing bowl. Mix ingredients with hands until well blended. Place 1/12 of the rice/meat mixture in the lower, middle part of a boiled cabbage leaf. Fold the sides of the leaf over the rice/meat mixture. Roll up the leaf from the bottom to make a cabbage roll. Repeat for the other 11 leaves.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add sugar, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and white wine vinegar to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Place damaged outer cabbage leaves on the bottom and on the sides of casserole dish. (This helps prevent the cabbage rolls from burning.) Place cabbage rolls seam side down in casserole dish. Pour tomato sauce/crushed tomatoes over cabbage rolls. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until meat is done.

(The doneness of the meat is difficult to assess without x-ray vision. If for some reason you don’t possess that capability, may I suggest discretely sampling one? Okay, okay that cabbage roll is yours.)

Place cabbage rolls on plates. Ladle tomato sauce from casserole dish onto cabbage rolls.

TIDBITS

1) There is only one way to spell “taco.” That way is “taco.” However, this are multiple ways to spell this entree, “golumkies.” They are: golumpkies, golabkis, and galumkies. There are probably many other spellings used by underground culinary cultures.

2) There are many, many taco trucks in America. But there aren’t many golumki trucks. This goes back to tidbit 1. All hungry eaters know what they’ll be enjoying when they go up to a taco truck.

3) What if you grew up thinking the correct spelling was golabki?. What if you saw a golumki truck on your street corner? What if you also suffered from dyslexia? You might think the vendor was selling “K gum oil.” You wouldn’t buy that, certainly not the “K” variety. You’d scurry down to the other corner where a truck owner sold tacos. The word tacos is so well known that even dyslexics won’t confuse it with any other word.

4) Lefthanders are much more likely to suffer from dyslexia than are northpaws.

5) There was a time way back when people walked hunched over. Half of them were cro magnon and the others were neanderthals.

6) We know now a right-handed cro magnon named Bartolomeo Diaz killed the first elk. It was delicious, especially cooked that new-fangled way with fire. In fact Bartolomeo routinely won all the caveman chef contests. Bartolomeo, being a kind hearted soul, rushed to all the neighboring caves and wrote, “I so gum elk.” Cavemen, notorious for bad dental hygiene, usually lost all their teeth by adulthood. So their word for “eat” was “gum.”

7) The right-handed cro magnons read Bartolomeo’s words and hunted elk. Elk meat is high in protein. The cro magnons grew in strength and stature. They would conquer the animal kingdom and rule the world.

8) Neanderthals were all lefthanded dyslexics. They interpreted the cave-wall writing as “golumkies.” They stopped all hunter-gatherings and searched for golumki trucks. There were no prehistoric golumki trucks. There are none now. The neanderthals died out. Bummer.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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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Carrot Cake

Posted on December 8, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

CARROT CAKE

INGREDIENTS – MAINcarrotcake

4 eggs
1⅓ cups sugar
⅔ cup light brown sugar
3 cups shredded carrots
1 cup vegetable oil
¼ teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups cake flour or flour
½ tablespoon baking soda
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans or combination
no-stick spray

INGREDIENTS – ICING

6 tablespoons butter (softened)
1 pound confectioner’s sugar
8 ounces cream cheese (softened)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater
9″ x 13″ casserole dish
3 mixing bowls (Or are you an outstanding chef like my Grandma Anna wished us all to be and who cleanse bowls and utensils as you cook?)
sonic obliterator

Makes about 30 2″-squares. Takes 2 hours.

PREPARATION – MAIN

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add eggs to first large mixing bowl. Use medium setting on electric beater until frothy. (The eggs, not you.) Gradually add sugar and light brown sugar. Blend using electric mixer set on whip until well blended. Add carrots, vegetable oil, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, and salt. Blend with mixer set on medium-high until well blended.

Add flour and baking soda to second large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Add flour/baking soda from second mixing bowl to first mixing bowl. Blend using electric beater’s medium-high setting. Add nuts and stir with spoon.

Spray casserole dish with no-stick spray. Pour eggs/sugar/spice/baking soda mixture into casserole dish. Smooth with spatula. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-to-45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Let cool on wire rack for 1 hour. Use spatula to smooth icing over carrot cake.

(Okay, little secret here. After 15 minutes, you can cool the cake down considerably faster by putting the casserole dish in cold water in the sink. Be sure the water is only halfway to the top of the casserole dish. If your casserole dish is too big for the sink, simply put it in the bathtub. Again, let the water go no higher than halfway up the side of the casserole dish. If someone happens to see your cake cooling in the bathtub and makes a snarky comment, zap him with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need that negativity in your life.)

PREPARATION – ICING

While cake bakes, add butter, confectioner’s sugar, cream cheese, and vanilla extract to third mixing bowl (Note: this cookbook always employs the Oxford comma when providing a list of ingredients. Long live the Oxford comma! Vexation to its enemies!) Ahem, beat ingredients using electric beater set on cream until ingredients become a fluffy icing.

TIDBITS

1) The famous French painter, Paul Cézanne believed, “A single carrot newly observed will cause a revolution.”

2) Eleven years after Cézanne died, the Russian Revolution began. People in the streets of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, had been starving. They couldn’t afford the price of a loaf of bread.

4) Desperate to maintain order, the czar and his ministers bought up food from all over the world. They purchased cabbages from Germany, eggs from Sweden, and carrots from the gardens of Cézanne’s children. The authorities even bought beans, cotija cheese, and tortillas from Mexico. Surely, the rioters would be placated by burritos. I mean, who doesn’t like a burrito?

5) Unfortunately, as in the case of many government programs, well intentioned though they might be, something went wrong. The newly formed Russian Ministry of Burrito Assembly put a raw carrot in every burrito.

6) The Russian rebel rabble not appreciate the taste of the raw carrot, bean, and cheese burrito. They did not like its texture either. They did not like it in the city square. They did not like in their hair. They did not like it in the air. They did not like it anywhere.

7) So the Russians did not eat these burritos. And they grew hungrier and hungrier.

8) Then an artist named Ivan Popoff came across one of the burritos lying–Oh gosh, I hope I conjugated this evil verb correctly–split open on the street. Something about the burrito’s carrot struck him. “Oh ho,” he said, “I am observing this carrot in an entirely new way.” Lenin, a passerby, heard this and immediately started the Russian Revolution.

9) Millions died during the Russian Revolution and the ensuing decades. We should all pay more attention to French post-Impressionist painters.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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

Egg Nog

Posted on December 6, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

EGG NOG

INGREDIENTSeggnog

6 eggs
⅛ teaspoon salt
¾ cup sugar
4 cups full fat milk
1 cup heavy cream
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSIL

electric beater

Makes 7 cups. Takes 1 hour.

PREPARATION

Add eggs, salt, and sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until salt and sugar dissolve. Add milk. Stir with whisk until thoroughly blended. Add this mixture to pot. Simmer on low heat for 10 minutes or until mixture coats a spoon. Stir frequently. Chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes or until liquid is cold.

Add heavy cream to small mixing bowl. Use medium-high setting on electric beater for 5 minutes or until peaks form on cream. Use whisk to fold heavy cream, nutmeg, and vanilla extract into large mixing bowl with milk/eggs mixture to form egg nog. Ladle egg nog into glasses or keep refrigerated for future use.

TIDBITS

1) Some say “nog” derives from “egg and grog.” a rum drink served in the American Colonies before the Revolution. The beverage was very popular. People had to have it.

2) In 1775, British forces stationed in Boston ran out of egg and grog. So the red coats marched to Lexington and Concord, egg and grog capitals of Massachusetts respectively, to seize ingredients. The local militia took up arms to stop them. I mean liberty and egg nog. The first shot was fired when some one dropped his musket while accepting a shot of egg nog from a local tavern keeper trying to drum up business. Another shot rang out. A battle broke out. The revolution had begun.

3) Culinary etymologists, however, say “obgyn” is an anagram for “by nog.” Truly successful obgyns know that their patients find visits unpleasant. So, these “egg” doctors keep a refreshing glass of egg nog by every chair in the waiting room so their patients can always sit “by nog.” Hence, “egg nog.”

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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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Mandasi (Doughnut Holes)

Posted on December 3, 2016 by pauldelancey

Malawian Dessert

MANDASI
(Doughnut Holes)

INGREDIENTSmandasi

2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups flour (2 tablespoons more later)
⅛ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1 egg
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons flour
about 2 cups vegetable oil

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour.

PREPARATION

Add baking powder, 2 cups flour, salt, and sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Melt butter in small pot using medium heat. Add egg to small bowl. Beat with fork or whisk. Add butter, egg, and milk. Mix together with fork until smooth. Cover and sit for 30 minutes. Dust flat surface and rolling pin with 2 tablespoons flour. Add dough to flat surface. Roll out dough until it is ¼” thick. Form dough into several 1″ balls. (Dough balls larger than 1″ thick are apt to get overcooked on the outside before their centers are done.)

Add enough vegetable oil to pot so that it is 1½” deep. Heat oil using medium-high heat. It will be hot enough when a tiny bit of dough starts to dance in the oil. Use ladle or wide spoon to carefully add dough balls to hot, hot oil. (May I suggest holding the pot’s lid between you and the oil when you do this?) Sauté at medium-high heat until the dough balls turn golden brown, about 2 minutes. Turn dough balls frequently to ensure even cooking. (Might want to sample one to see if they’re cooked in the center.) Repeat for subsequent batches. Cooking time tends to go down with each batch, so be vigilant. Remove dough balls, now doughnut holes, and pat dry with paper towels.

TIDBITS

1) Mandasi is an anagram for “I am sand.”

2) There is sand in Malawi. Malawians don’t talk a lot; their lives are hard. That is why they do desserts. There, the terse, stressed eat desserts. And then all is all right.

3) Malawi always runs out of doughnuts every 5 pm. People get stressed. Things get dark. Real dark.

4) Heck, I don’t know how to end this. *Points to the sky* “Oh look, Halley’s Comet!” *Runs away*

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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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Crispy Fish Scallopini

Posted on November 25, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Entree

CRISPY FISH SCALLOPINI

INGREDIENTScrispycodscallopini

2 garlic cloves
1 pound cod fillets or other white fish
¼ cup flour (1 more tablespoon later)
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon sage
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chicken broth
1 tablespoons Chardonnay or white wine
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon drained capers
1 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil (up to 2 teaspoons more)
¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon parsley

Serves 3. Takes 50 minutes.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

cooking mallet

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves. Pound cod fillets to ¼” thickness with clean cooking mallet. If you don’t have such a cooking tool, try putting a few sheets of wax paper on top of the cod and whack away with a blunt instrument.

Combine ¼ cup flour, pepper, sage, and salt in mixing bowl. Dredge the cod fillets through this mixture. Cut cod fillets into 6 cutlets. Put chicken broth, Chardonnay, water, lemon juice, capers, 1 tablespoon flour, and garlic in second mixing bowl. Mix sauce thoroughly.

Melt butter in no-stick frying pan. Cook on medium high and add 1 tablespoon olive oil. Place as many flour/pepper coated fillets as possible into frying pan. Cook for up to 5 minutes on each sides or until cutlets turn golden brown and crispy. Add 1 teaspoon olive oil to the pan each time you cook another batch of fillets. Remove cod.

Pour broth/caper sauce into frying pan. Heat on medium high for 1 to 2 minutes or until sauce boils and thickens. Pour sauce over cod cutlets. Sprinkle Parmesan and parsley over the cod.
TIDBITS

1) Early humans were hunter-gatherers. They liked crispy mastodon steaks. Baby-back mastodon ribs were a particularly liked delicacy.

2) Where delicacy meant a rib or hunk of meat cut of the mastodon with flint, then thrown on to the fire. If the went out early, the meat was cooked on the outside and left rare on the inside, trapping the juices inside. Thus, the culinary technique of searing was born. Well done, mastodon chefs! Well okay, except for the omnipresent layer of ashes on the meat. Mesquite wood provided the tastiest ashes. To this day, mesquite wood is the choice for all serious barbequers. I told you the prehistoric era was a hotbed of culinary innovation. Oh, and sometime the fires were put out by sand.

3) Indeed, a revolutionary recipe by Ogg, a caveman states:

Our People Entree

MASTODON STEAKS

INGREDIENTSmastodonhunt

1 mastodon
many pieces of mesquite wood
many handfuls of sand

Serves many. Takes time.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

flint

PREPARATION

Skin mastodon with flint. Cut out chunks of meat with flint. Pile mesquite near a likely place for a likely lightning strike. Wait for lightning strike. Throw mastodon chunks on fire. Have sex with wife. If the love making is quick, the meat will be rare. If the foreplay is slow and sensitive, the meat will be well done. Put out fire with sand.

4) The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD wiped out the towns of Pompeii and Heraclaneum. However, a survivor, Quintus Cato, gleaned some good out of the bad days. He thought, “What if I flattened some fish with a mallet, breaded it, and gingerly dipped the fish into the edges of the lava flow just long enough for the sand to run through this timer? Why, I’d have some great crispy fish scallopini!”

5) Many fishermen met their end falling into the hot lava while making this dish. The lava method of preparing fish rapidly fell out of favor. People hated Quintus. His family was shunned.

6) Then in 112 AD, his grandson redeemed his family’s honor when he thought, “Oh feck, why not use mesquite wood or even wood from the olive tree?” And so, crispy fish scallopini became easy to make. We are forever grateful.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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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Creamy Garlic Soup (Krémová Cesnaková Polievka)

Posted on November 23, 2016 by pauldelancey

Slovakian Soup

CREAMY GARLIC SOUP
(Krémová Cesnaková Polievka)

INGREDIENTScreamygarlicsoup

2 potatoes
4 cups water (1 more cup later)
¾ cup milk
1 cup water
5 garlic cloves
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons butter
2½ tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 large, hollowed round bread loaves
1 teaspoon parsley

SPECIAL UTENSIL

potato masher

Makes 2 large bread bowls.. Takes 1 hour.

PREPARATION

Peel potatoes. Cut each potato into four pieces. Add potato pieces and 4 cups water to large pot. Bring to boil using high heat for 20 minutes or until potato softens. Stir frequently. Remove from heat. Add milk and 1 cup water. Stir with spoon. Remove potato pieces from water. Leave water/milk in pot..

While water boils, mince garlic. Beat egg yolk in small cup. Melt butter in pan using low-medium heat. Add melted butter and flour to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until blended. Add potato pieces. Mash potato pieces with potato masher. Mix potato, flour, and butter with fork until potatoes becomes creamy.

Add creamy mashed potatoes, garlic, egg yolk, and salt to pot with saved water. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to warm and cook for 15 minutes or until everything is smooth. Stir frequently. Ladle soup into hollowed round bread loaves.. Garnish with parsley.

TIDBITS

1) It is virtually impossible to tell a volcano that has blown its from a creamy garlic soup bowl, but I shall try. Active volcanoes spew forth pumice and red-hot lava. Creamy garlic soup bowls have ingredients. Volcanoes are dangerous, often fatal. Soup bowls are tasty. You eat soup bowls with spoons. Lava is hot; you can’t eat it. Oh, and volcanoes are generally bigger than soup bowls. There.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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

Toad in the Hole

Posted on November 18, 2016 by pauldelancey

British Entree

TOAD IN THE HOLE

INGREDIENTStoadinthehole

1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon mustard powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
3 eggs
1¼ cups milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (2 more tablespoons later)
2 pounds bangers or plain pork sausages or beef sausages
¼ teaspoon rosemary
¼ teaspoon thyme
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion
½ tablespoon brown sugar
¾ cup beef stock

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Combination 8″ x 12″ casserole dish & time machine (They’re handy!)

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 15 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add flour, mustard powder, and salt to 1st mixing bowl. Blend with whisk. Melt butter. Add eggs to 2nd bowl. Beat eggs with whisk. Add melted butter and milk to eggs. Mix thoroughly with whisk. Add liquid contents of 2nd bowl to flour in 1st bowl. Blend with whisk until mixture becomes smooth bread pudding. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes.

While pudding sits, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat sides and bottom of casserole dish with 2 tablespoons vegetable oil. Put casserole dish in oven. Raise temperature to 425 degrees. When oven temperature reaches 425 degrees, remove casserole dish. Add sausages evenly to casserole dish. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes or until sausages start to brown on all sides. You might need to turn them over at least once. (Be careful! Use oven mitts!) Remove casserole dish from oven. Pour bread budding over sausages. Sprinkle with rosemary and thyme. Put casserole dish back in oven. Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes or until toothpick stuck into batter comes out clean.

While batter bakes, mince onion. Add onion and 2 tablespoons vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add brown sugar and beef stock. Simmer on low heat for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Ladle this beef stock/onion gravy over bread pudding and sausages in casserole dish.

TIDBITS

1) Sometimes it can be quite hard to track down every ingredient listed in a recipe, even when you think they should be easy to find.

2) In the case of this recipe, bangers were the items that were hard to track down. Impossible even. There’s a small discount supermarket (Small supermarket is a bit of contradiction, isn’t it?) that occasionally carries bangers, the British sausage. Occasionally. When it’s overstocked somewhere in San Diego County. How often does that happen? *Bangs head against wall*

3) Sorry for the delay in writing this tidbit, I had a headache from banging my head against the wall.

4) But wait, there was no delay for you, was there? It’s kinda like having your own time-travel machine.

5) Anyway, if you can’t find bangers nearby, try and get plain pork sausages. If your supermarkets don’t have such things, try and get beef sausages.

6) Don’t settle for tiny breakfast sausages. Just don’t. The sausages will settle under this dish’s bread pudding. Your guests will make remarks that while meant to be witty, will come across as being ungrateful and mean. You will race to your closet to get your saber. All sorts of boxes full of stuff you don’t even remember will fall on your head. Your headache will come roaring back as if The HulkTM himself is squeezing your skull. You will be in no mood to see reason. You will skewer all your guests, dispatching them with a hearty “Take that” or “Ho, ho.”

7) The law will take a dim view of such stuff. No, not the screaming of “Take that” or “Ho, ho,” rather the offing of your diners. It bears repeating, police don’t like premeditated murder or even manslaughter in this case. On the other hand, they’re remarkably tolerant of what you say while killing someone. They know if you’re so disturbed as to end someone’s life, you’re not going to be at your literary best. To save yourself embarrassment, may I suggest picking up a copy of 101 Clever Things to Say While Murdering?

8) So murder is out. You will need to create your own bangers. A banger is 65% pork sausage, 30% tusk (dried bread), and 5% seasonings. Simply, take your Bushnell 457 Sausage InjectorTM and fill it with a mixture of 5 parts dried bread to 1 part seasonings. Then inject the tusk/seasoning mix into the plain pork sausage until the ratio of pork sausage to mix is 13 to 7.

9) It does take practice to get the pork sausage/seasoning mix proportion just right. It takes even more practice to inject a lot of mixture into a sausage that already fills in casing completely. In fact, you’re almost certain to explode the sausage, causing you to fly into a rage, fly to your closet to get that saber again, and dispatch the first guest who even comes into your kitchen. That would be bad, run-on sentences like this are horrible.

10) Oh and Bushnell 457 Sausage Injectors are truly hard to find. The company stop making them in 2014. Which is why you simply must have a Bushnell 323 Combination Casserole Dish & Time MachineTM. Simply go back to a time when your local discount supermarket carried bangers. Then use that same gizmo to bake this entree. See? Life is good after all. Thank you, Bushnell.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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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