cuisine

Pigs In A Blanket

Posted on July 19, 2012 by pauldelancey

American Entree

PIGS IN A BUTTERMILK BLANKET

INGREDIENTS

1 16 ounce package jumbo buttermilk biscuit dough
1 cup grated four cheeses
8 turkey franks

PREPARATION

Defrost franks. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate the dough into eight pieces. Elongate each dough piece with a rolling pin dusted with flour (Male chefs, this will not work on you.) or simply roll a frozen turkey frank along the dough if any are remaining.

(You don’t have to use turkey franks instead of beef franks or buttermilk biscuits in this dish. In keeping with this cookbook’s theme of “Cooking with what’s handy,” I used, well, what was handy. Similarly, a 10 ounce package of dough 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 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5) Footballs were originally made from pigs’ bladders.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.

6) 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 touchdowns if he had been tossing chicken bladders downfield?

– 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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Potato-Leek Soup

Posted on July 17, 2012 by pauldelancey

American Soup

POTATO-LEEK SOUP

INGREDIENTS

1 pound leeks
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cups celery stalks
4 medium potatoes
3 cups water
3 cups milk
3/4 teaspoon Vegetable MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon parsley
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
up to 1 cup grated cheese, optional

PREPARATION OF THE LEEKS

Cut off and remove the tough dark, green parts. Remove the bottom part with the little roots. Cut the leeks into pieces and swirl them in water to remove bits of dirt. Pat down the pieces with a towel to dry them. Put leeks into a food-processor and mince them.

PREPARATION OF THE SOUP.

Melt butter in pan. (Note it is much easier to measure 3 tablespoons from a stick of butter than from a tub.) Mince the celery. Add leeks and celery to melted butter.

Saute on low heat and stir frequently for about 6 minutes or until onions are soft. (Reading War and Peace is not advised at this point.)

Chop up potatoes until they are small enough to put into a blender. Blend the heck out of them. Put 3 cups water into pot. Heat water to boiling. Cook for about 15 minutes this way or until potato bits are tender. (Note you should gradually turn down the heat. The soup will still boil and you will avoid painful geysers of hot potato water. (A great reason not to cook in the nude.)

Dice cilantro until you have 1/2 cup. Add sauteed leeks, celery, milk, cilantro, vegetable spice, celery salt, parsley, and salt. Cover and cook at low heat for 20 minutes. Taste soup. Sprinkle in other spices if you wish. Some people love onion salt, garlic salt, or Tabasco sauce in everything. If you are that kind of cook, go for it!

Add grated cheese to taste.

EATING OF THE SOUP

Nom, nom, nom.

TIDBITS

1) The potato was cultivated by the Incas. The Spanish took it back to Europe and gave little in return.

2) The potato revolutionized warfare. Previous to widespread cultivation of this amazing tuber, armies on the move stripped the conquered territories of any food growing above ground. Farmers could now wait until the invading hordes left and dig up enough potatoes to survive. Armies could also feed themselves on the potatoes they brought along. There is a sketch of the great French general Napoleon asking a foot soldier for a potato.

3) The Irish depended quite heavily on the potato for their nutritional needs. When the potato crop failed in 1848, many Irish starved and large numbers of them migrated to America.

4) Indeed, loud guffaws never swirled around the humble potato.

5) Until HasbroTM created Mr. Potato HeadTM in 1962. Now we can all eat the potato or play with it.

6) Mr. Potato HeadTM seems so obvious now. That’s why genius is genius.

– 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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Turkey Burgers

Posted on July 15, 2012 by pauldelancey

American Entrée-Basic

TURKEY BURGERS

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 pounds of ground turkey meat
1 onion
1/4 green bell peppers
2 green onion stalks
2 tablespoons garlic salt
1/2 tablespoons cumin
8 potato hamburger buns – top and bottom
1/4 head of lettuce, washed
1 cup of grated four-cheese blend
1 ketchup bottle
water
extra virgin olive oil

SPECIALTY UTENSILS

Sonic obliterator
Four-slice toaster

TOASTING THE BUNS

You really need a four-slice toaster. You simply cannot feed turkey burgers to a hungry horde with a two-hole toaster. Don=t do four bun halves, two whole buns, and rest on your laurels.

(You say you need more immediate motivation? Pretend the members of your brood have become ravenous cannibals ready to sink their razor sharp canines into your haunches unless they get their turkey burgers.) Keep on toasting.

(And DON’T, DON’T, microwave anything while toasting. You’ll trip your circuit breaker and you’ll have to dash outside and flip the circuits. This is one reason against cooking in the nude. The other being that grease splatters.)

PREPARING THE ONION

Remove the skin. It adds nothing to the taste, is papery, and gets stuck between your teeth. (How can you concentrate on your boss’s story about mango harvesting in Tahiti when you have onion skin between your first and second molars annoying the heck out of you? Remove the skin, now.)

Also cut off the root part at the bottom. It’s edible ,I suppose, but hardly tasty. If the onion has a big, green sprout in the middle, it’s because you bought it when Nixon was in office and is no longer edible.

PREPARING THE GREEN BELL PEPPERS

It really helps if you have a prepared green bell pepper left over from last night’s culinary extravaganza, made from the chapter on stuffed green peppers, for example.

If not, cut the top off the green bell pepper and discard, or at least discard the stem. Scoop out the innards of the pepper seeds and those four vertical, soft whitish columns and throw them away.

Chop up the pepper and put it in a pan. Coat the pieces with olive oil. Use extra-virgin olive oil. (That’s the most virgin you can get, unless you went through school studying economics.)

Cook the green bell pepper. This process is called sauteeing.

(See, you’re picking up the vocabulary. Mais oui. C’est magnifique, n’est ce pas? Ho, ho, ho.)

CHOPPING UP THE VEGGIES

You really must get yourself a food processor, big or small, one with two little whirling blades. This little gizmo will make chopping up or mincing the veggies so much faster than cutting them up with a knife. If your knife is blunt, this task takes forever. And a sharp knife is just too tempting for a spouse sulking over your latest big purchase.

Get a food processor. Mince the green onions. Mince the onions. Onions are big. (Don’t let that intimidate you. You’re bigger than they and have opposable thumbs.) Be sure to cut it up into at least four sections before putting it into the processor. Chop up the bell peppers.

SPICING

The above list of spices assumes you like the same amount of spices as I do. So experiment. Once you become adept at cooking, you=ll be able to smell the correct amount of spice to add as you mix.

 PREPARING THE BURGER

Get a big bowl. Put the ingredients you’ve prepared so far. Mix. Mix with your hands until everything is thoroughly mixed. Your hands will get extremely messy.

(Midway through the mixing is, of course, the time someone will knock on your front door to ask you if you want your trees trimmed, even if you don’t have any. In the meantime you have dropped turkey meat all over that hard-to-justify-buying Persian carpet and of course, on the front doorknob. 

This is the time to say, “Excuse me, I’ll just be a moment.” Go back to the kitchen table, pick up the sonic obliterator, and annihilate the would-be tree trimmer. Wipe up and pick up all bits of turkey meat on the way back to the kitchen. Cleanliness is a virtue.)

THE TURKEY-BURGER PATTIES

Make four patties and put them in your pan. The patties should not be much bigger than your spatula or they might fall apart when turned over.

Turn the heat to high to get things going and gradually turn it down to medium or medium high. The higher you set the temperature, the more closely you’ll need to watch the patties and turn them over.

Turkey meat turns white when cooked. The outside turns white  before the inside does. So how do you know when it’s done? It’s perfectly acceptable for a chef, particularly one that’s starting out, to cut a small piece near the edge and look at it and taste it. If the inside of the piece is white, then it is done. Remember, if no one saw you taste the burger, then it didn’t happen.

(By the way, it is a matter between you and your God about what to do if you should drop an entire patty on the floor. Consider the cleanliness of your floor and the likability of your guests in making your decision.)

You must flip the burgers repeatedly with your spatula. If you do not do so, the water will rise to the top of the burger and evaporate, making the burger too dry to eat. Flipping puts the water that has almost escaped on the bottom of the burger again.

 Consider occasionally sprinkling water on top of the patty and pouring a thin layer of water into the pan. This adds moisture to the burger and a moist burger is a yummy burger.

ASSEMBLING THE TURKEY BURGER

Put the bottom bun–it’s flat–on the plate. Put the cooked patty on the bun and the lettuce atop the patty. (There are some heretics who put the lettuce on first, but they are being hunted down without mercy.) Sprinkle the cheese on next. If you are adventurous, pour on some ketchup. Place the top bun–it’s dome shaped–on next.

You are now a culinary hero to your guests.

TIDBITS

1) A Hamburger is someone from Hamburg, Germany. The term a hamburger derives from this city. A Berliner is someone from Berlin. Berliner is also the name of a jelly doughnut. Some people think when President Kennedy said in that famous Cold War speech, Ich bin ein Berliner, he was actually saying, “I am a jelly doughnut.”

2) The first official listing of a hamburger on a menu occurred at Delmonico’s in New York in 1826.

3) Cheeseburger In Paradise is a great song.

4) A turkey is not someone from Turkey. It is a bowling term.

5) The turkey was one of the first animals in North America to be domesticated.

6) Turkeys were called turkeys in the 1500s by English merchants because they thought turkeys came from India and that Turkey owned India. Bozos.

– 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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Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Posted on July 14, 2012 by pauldelancey

Jamaican Entree

JERK CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS

4 chicken breasts or about 3 pounds
1 cup green onions
1 white onion
3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons jerk spice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon allspice
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons water
6 tablespoons vegetable oil

PREPARATION

Cut chicken into squares 1-inch wide. Dice green onions, onion, and garlic. Put chicken in mixing bowl. Add green onions, white onion, garlic, jerk spice, cinnamon, thyme, and allspice. Coat the chicken squares thoroughly with the spices. Add soy sauce and water. Mix again. (If your hands aren’t completely messy, you haven’t been mixing enough. Oh. Oh.)

Cover mixing bowl and refrigerate for 3 hours. (Three hours? You mean after all this work I can’t eat it for three hours? Dear reader, I feel your culinary pain. Still, this dish is worth waiting for. However, for those who have ravenous, important, career-changing guests arriving in just one hour, next time read the recipes through before attempting them, for goodness sakes.)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Put chicken into one or two baking dishes. Coat chicken with cooking oil. Bake for about 50 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) Water covers about 71% of the Earth’s surface.

2) Chicken breasts do not.

3) However, there is a rough equivalence of water and chicken breasts on the surface of the Moon.

4) More and more scientists are suspecting water exists below Mars’ surface.

5) They are, however, strangely silent about the possibility of chicken breasts as well.

6) Or even drumsticks.

7) The old line, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” was developed on Earth and according to current knowledge was never even told when astronauts roamed the Moon.

8) But the joke continues to be told on Earth even though NASA’s manned-lunar program is over.

9) Hah!

– 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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Mexican Onion Dip

Posted on July 11, 2012 by pauldelancey

Mexican Appetizer

Mexican Onion Dip

INGREDIENTSMexOnDp-

1 cup Crema Mexicana (Mexican sour cream)
1/4 cup green onions
1 1/2 tablespoons parsley
1 garlic clove
1/2 teaspoon Vegetable MagicTM spice
1/2 cup Cotija cheese

PREPARATION

Mince green onions and garlic. Crumble Cotija cheese. Mix all ingredients in bowl. Serve as a dip or on baked potatoes.

Wow! Wow! Wow! Two lines of instruction. It doesn’t get much easier than this or tastier.

(The following three blank lines are reserved for tic-tac-toe games.)

TIDBITS

1) According to a Google search there are no fun facts about sour cream, only interesting ones.

2) Further investigation showed the information that was supposed to be listed here to be false. So, it was deleted.

3) That is why the following tidbit now makes no sense.

4) I’m guessing a year is way more than sufficient.

5) I told you above that tidbit 4) no longer makes sense. Did you listen?

6) Russians use sour cream in cold, salted potato fish soups.

7) Yum.

8) Not.

9) It is unlikely that there will ever be a movie about sour cream as there was about Facebook.

– 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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Chimole Recipe

Posted on July 8, 2012 by pauldelancey

Belizean Entree

CHIMOLE

INGREDIENTS

1 small pumpkin squash, or nearest orangish squash you can find
1 large white potato
1 medium white onion
1 chayote
4 large, ripe red tomatoes
4 garlic cloves
3 medium whole cloves
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
2 tablespoons red recado
1 tablespoon black recado
2 vegetable bouillon cubes1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon allspice
1 tablespoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 tablespoon red pepper
6 cups water2 chicken breasts
8 hard-boiled eggs
8 or more flour tortillas

UTENSIL

spice or coffee grinder

PREPARATION

Peel pumpkin, onion, and white potato. Dice squash, potato, onion, chayote, and tomatoes. Mince garlic cloves. (Just in off the internet news. Five people stole 9.5 tons of garlic. They were caught by the Hungarian border police who noticed a strong garlic smell coming from the five cars.)Put whole cloves and black peppercorns in spice grinder. Grind until you get a powdery substance. Crumble red recado, black recado, and bouillon cubes into soup pot. Add salt, allspice, oregano, cumin and red pepper. Pour in water and heat on medium for about 40 minutes or until all veggies are soft.

While the vegetables and spice are cooking, chop up chicken breasts into 1/2-inch cubes. Also, boil eggs for about 12 minutes and let them cool. Add chicken cubes to soup pot.

Ladle soup into bowls. Peel eggs and slice each three times. Put an equal number of egg slices on top of the soup in each bowl. Serve with at least two flour tortillas and one plate per person. The tortillas may be used for dipping or for making burritos from the soup.

TIDBITS

1) January is National Soup Month. What does this mean? I don’t know. Have you ever celebrated National Soup Month? Me neither.

2) Soup is an anagram for opus. Opus means an artistic work such as an opera.

3) Soup is also an anagram for puos. Puos is the plural form of puo.

4) Soup lovers in America eat about ten millions bowls of soup a year.

5) Soup haters consume considerably fewer.

6) Nebraskan bar owners may not sell beer unless they are cooking soup. That and possessing a liquor license.

7) Andy Warhol ate tomato soup every day for lunch for over twenty years. He became a famous pop artist. However, hundreds of millions of people have devoured rivers of tomato soup without achieving the slightest bit of fame. So, who can say?

– 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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Hard-Boiled Eggs: Extreme Cookbook Basics

Posted on July 4, 2012 by pauldelancey

Fusion Breakfast

HARD-BOILED EGGS

Take a deep breath. Today you’ll make your first heated meal. Don’t give that excuse of going to the dentist. I’ve heard it too many times.

INGREDIENTSboilegg-

eggs
water

Find a big pot. Gently put eggs, maybe four, into the pot. Be careful not to crack the eggs or they will ooze albumen, that white stuff, during the boiling. You will not have nice round eggs.

(Instead, you will be serving something that looks like a tentacled Jabba the Hut. Your dinner guests will laugh at you, first behind your back and then to your face. You’ll take up drinking. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself look down into the foamy abyss from the cliffs of Niagra falls, reliving that horrible moment one last time.)

So be careful when you place those eggs in the pot. Alternatively, consider putting more than the desired number of eggs in the pot. Try, for example, putting six eggs instead of the required four. This way, you can break the shells of up to two eggs and still pridefully serve the four remaining to your three dining companions and you.

Warning! Don’t place the eggs on the bottom of the pot by hand if the water is boiling or has even begun to heat. You’ll scald your hands. Ouch. Use a spaghetti spoon, one that cradles the egg, to gently deposit it on the bottom.

If somehow boiling water splatters onto your hands, immediately put your hands under the kitchen faucet and pour cold water on them. You have only a few seconds to do this to avoid searing pain.

And oh, I’m glad I didn’t forget this. Fill the pot with water until it covers the eggs and not to the top. Air bubbles form as the water boils, pushing the water upward. The water can then boil over onto the stove, making a big mess. It can also splatter onto your hands.

Anyway, turn the heat to high. For some minutes, nothing will happen. Nothing. Experienced chefs have a sixth sense of how long the water will take to boil and will retire to the library to knock off a few pages more of Moby Dick.

Once the water truly starts to boil–and you mastered spotting this in the previous chapter–-set the timer to how long you want to cook the egg. I prefer twelve minutes.

Green yolks come from the reaction of iron in the egg yolk and sulfur in the egg and occurs if the eggs are heated too long. Don’t let it happen.

Remove the eggs from the pot when the timer goes off. Use a spoon with holes in it or carefully pour the hot water out of the pot (Here’s a helpful tip! Pour the boiling water onto those dirty dishes in your sink. The boiling water works wonders in loosening the encrusted food from your dishes.)

Put the hot eggs into another pot or large bowl full of cold water. The cold water stops the cooking of the eggs. When the eggs stop cooking, you stop green yolk in its tracks.

Don’t peel off the shell until it is fairly cool. (Your fingers will thank and your neighbors won’t have to hear you cussing.) Examine the egg. Find the rounder, less pointy end of the egg. The empty pocket of well, nothingness, existing at this end makes cracking open the egg easier. Tap the rounder part of the egg to a hard surface–-don’t use your skull, a counter top will do. Carefully peel off the large eggshell bits and there you have it, a NICE HARD-BOILED EGG. Woo hoo.

TIDBITS

1) A raw egg will wobble when spun. A hard-boiled one spins smoothly.

2) Poke a small hole in the bottom of the egg before cooking to make sure your hard-boiled egg will have a round bottom. Be careful, a large hole or crack lets much of the egg seep out and be boiled outside the shell.

3) Eggs age more in one day outside the refrigerator than inside. Use this to your advantage when considering the likability of your guests.

– 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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Blackened Turkey Dog Recipe – From Cookbook

Posted on July 2, 2012 by pauldelancey

Cajun Entree

BLACKENED TURKEY DOGS

INGREDIENTS

6 turkey hot dogs
6 hot dog buns
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon thyme
No-stick cooking spray

PREPARATION

Preheat skillet to 350 degrees. Completely defrost turkey dogs. Mix paprika, salt, cayenne, poultry spice, cumin, and thyme on large plate. Coat all sides of the turkey dogs with spray.

Place the turkey dogs on plate and roll them until they are coated with spices. Place turkey dogs in skillet and cook for 8 to 12 minutes making a quarter turn every 1 to 2 minutes, or until spices blacken.

Toast buns. (Why do hot dogs and hot-dog buns come in different amounts? Why has no president done anything about it?) Put turkey dogs in buns. If you like Cajun cooking, you should need no condiments, such as ketchup. But as the French say, “Chaque à son gout.”

TIDBITS

1) I have never seen blackened hot dogs anywhere. This dish is a product of my feverish imagination. It’s good, though.

2) In 1755 and 1758, the British exiled French Canadians from Acadia. Many moved to Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns.

3) Cajun food is spicy. Canadian food is not. Nor is Eskimo cuisine. Eskimos do not have hot sauce.

4) I mostly grew up in Arcadia, California.

5) Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana. French Guiana is in South America. Why is this land not independent? Do the people love French cooking?

6) Cayenne is mostly grown in Mexico, Asia, Africa, New Mexico, and Louisiana. But apparently not much in a land that has a capital named Cayenne.

7) National Hot Dog Day is July 18.

8) Babe Ruth is believed to have consumed twelve hot dogs and drank eight sodas between games of a double header.

9) Americans eat about 150 million hot dogs on the Fourth of July.

10) Humphrey Bogart was a big fan of hot dogs. Coincidentally, he won an Oscar for his performance in The African Queen.

11) Mustard is the favorite hot-dog topping among adult Americans. Kids, however, prefer ketchup.

12) Maybe this recipe will change that.

– 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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Greek Dolmathes

Posted on July 1, 2012 by pauldelancey

Greek Entree

DOLMATHES
(stuffed grape leaves)

INGREDIENTSDolmath-

100 grape leaves
4 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 medium onions
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
3/4 cups uncooked rice
1 teaspoon parsley
1/2 tablespoon Prudhomme’s Poultry MagicTM spice
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Mediterranean rice seasoning
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

SPECIAL HELP

Your kids, relatives, neighbors, and anyone else who comes within your gravitational field.

PREPARATION

Pick 100 grape leaves. Remove stems. This is a great task for the kids. If you don’t have grapes growing on the side of the hill in your front yard, they can be found at the Greek section of your supermarket.

Dice onion. Saute onion in butter until tender and golden. Pour mix into big bowl. Let it cool for at least five minutes. Your fingers will thank you. Add turkey, rice, parsley, poultry spice, coriander, pepper, rice seasoning, water, tomato sauce, and lemon juice. Whew. Mix thoroughly.

(Memorize the following phrases to sound like a great chef: heat over to 350 degrees, cook to golden brown, use a big pot, mix thoroughly, and stir occasionally.)

Put all the grape leaves in a big pot. (See? Sounds culinary, doesn’t it?) Cover the leaves with water. Cook on medium-high heat until all the leaves turn from a bright green to an olive green. This is called blanching.

Pour out all the water. (Try pouring it on that pan you used to fry eggs. That hot water will loosen the egg bits from the pan right quick.)

Put the leaves on a big plate. Take a leaf and put it on a board, or another plate, with the smooth, shiny side face down. Put about a teaspoon of your meat/rice/spice mix in the middle of the leaf. Fold the bottom of the leaf until it just covers the mix. Fold both sides in so they completely cover the mix. Roll up the leaf like a burrito or spring roll, making sure to keep the sides folded in. This step takes the longest.

Put a few leaves on the bottom of the pot. Put the first rolled up leaves, dolmathes, up against the sides of the pot. Put the next leaves against those leaves and so on. You need the dolmathes jammed together so they don’t unravel. Add layers as necessary.

Add water to pot until all dolmathes are covered. Place a lid that is slightly smaller than the pot on top of the dolmathes to further keep them from unraveling. Cook on low heat for 45 minutes.

You can speed up the process by cooking the rice while mixing the meat and spices together. In this case, reduce the cooking of the dolmathes to 30 minutes.

Don’t throw away the liquid that remains in the pot after you serve the dolmathes. It makes an excellent broth.

TIDBITS

1) Dolmathe is a great ScrabbleTM word.

2) I first made this dish years ago for my wife’s birthday. We are still married.

3) My family and I first ate dolmathes at a wonderful Greek restaurant in Portland, Oregon.

4) I went to graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin. The two Greek restaurants nearest to the school were across the street from each other.

5) The three stages of mathematics are: 1) numbers, 2) lower-case English letters, and 3) Greek letters. If there is a fourth stage, I don’t want to know it. My head would explode.

6) Socrates almost died in battle. If he had, all Western philosophical thought would have been completely altered. Cliff Notes would have put out one fewer booklet.

– 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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Chicken Satay

Posted on June 24, 2012 by pauldelancey

Thai Entree

CHICKEN SATAY WITH PEANUT SAUCE

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 pounds chicken breasts

MARINADE

3 garlic cloves
2/3 cup raspberry drinkable low-fat yogurt
1/3 cup ranch yogurt dressing
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon lemongrass
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

PEANUT SAUCE

1 cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon mayonnaise
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 cup warm water

quarter head of iceberg lettuce

UTENSILS

grill

12 to 20 unicorn horns
12 to 20 wooden skewers (if your supermarkets don’t carry unicorn horns)

PREPARATION

Cut chicken into 1-inch cubes.

MARINADE

Peel and mince garlic cloves. Combine garlic, drinkable yogurt, yogurt dressing, turmeric, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, lemongrass, ginger, and soy sauce in shallow bowl.

Put chicken cubes in shallow mixing bowl. Turn over cubes in sauce until thoroughly coated with sauce. Cover and put chicken marinate in refrigerator for up to 2 hours.

(If your horde of youngin’s and spouse are ravenously hungry, it’s okay to skip putting the marinade in the fridge. It’ll still taste great, but the flavor won’t quite go all the way to the middle of the chicken cube. Then again, if they’re hungry to the point of chewing fruit cake, they probably won’t notice this shortcut.)

PREPARATION OF PEANUT SAUCE

Combine peanut butter, soy sauce, red chili pepper, mayonnaise, brown sugar, lime juice, and warm water in blender. Set blender to liquify and watch until, well, the mixture is liquified. Add a little extra water if needed.

FINAL PREPARATION

Carefully thread the coated chicken cubes onto the wooden skewers. (I do mean carefully. Those skewers can draw blood.) The skewer should be in the middle of the cube. Put cubes onto the first 3/4ths of the skewer. (You will need that last empty 1/4th to turn the chicken laden skewers over on the grill.)

Grills, especially indoor grills, vary greatly in heating ability, so vigilance is a must. On my little indoor grill I cooked on high for 5 minutes on a side for a total of 15 minutes. Again, your grill might cook much quicker, say in 8 minutes total.

Put lettuce leaves on each plate. Place chicken satays on top lettuce. Pour peanut sauce over both.

The person who agrees to clean up gets an extra skewer.

TIDBITS

1) The term “raspberry” or the sound of derision made with the tongue and mouth seems to have come from England.

2) England conquered and took over Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada, the eastern part of America, many islands in the Caribbean, parts of Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, India, Burma, much of Africa, and little islands everywhere.

3) It is doubtful the English did all this land grabbing by giving natives everywhere the “raspberry.”

4) A likelier explanation comes from English superiority in naval and land tactics coupled with vast advantages in weaponry.

5) England today is a part of Britain with the British Empire being much diminished from its peak. Much of this decline came about when its armed forces lost their superiority on the battlefields and the high seas.

6) However, the food prepared by the chefs of Her Majesty’s armies are the envy of British restaurant goers everywhere. These chefs even won a prestigious national award.

6) Tidbit 6) has already been written.

 

– 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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