food

Corned Beef Soup Recipe

Irish Entree

CORNED BEEF SOUP

INGREDIENTSIrCorBS-

1 4-to-5 pound ready-to-cook corned beef brisket
6 russet potatoes
3 large carrots
1 large white onion
1/2 head cabbage
water
more water

SPECIALTY UTENSIL

crock pot

PREPARATION

At the crock pot’s low setting, the brisket can take 10-to-14 hours to become tender. The high setting will cut this time by about half.

Put ready-to-cook corned beef brisket in crock pot. Add water to crock pot until it covers the brisket. You may need to cut the brisket into smaller pieces depending on the size of your crock pot. Cook for 10-to-14, possibly overnight, or until brisket is tender.

Clean potatoes and carrots. Cut potatoes carrots, onions, and cabbages in slices no thicker than 1/2″ inch and add them to the crock pot. and vegetables. Add as much water as your crock pot will allow. Cook on low setting for about 2 hours or until vegetables are tender.

If you do not have enough water to make soup, boil more water in a separate pot. Combine ingredients from crock pot with hot water from pot in soup bowl. Alternatively, put leftovers from corned-beef meal in large soup. Add water to achieve desired thickness. Cook on high heat until soup boils then turn off heat. Stir occasionally. If people have been asking for 14 hours, “Is it ready, yet?” you can now say yes. Resist the temptation to clock them. You are a gracious host.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe uses lots of water.

2) Water is good for you. Your body needs it to live. You can go maybe three days without drinking water.

3) Water is also used for showering. You can go indefinitely without showering.

4) I wouldn’t recommend it though. You’ll probably lose your job and all future invitations to neighborhood weenie roasts.

5) And who could live without a weenie roast, especially since the invention of veggie hot dogs?

6) Don’t forget the therapeutic value of showers. Shower spray pounding on one’s shoulders washes away one’s tension and anger.

7) If you don’t release your tension and anger, you’re much more likely to bump someone off.

8) Water. Good for your body. Good for your outlook. Good for your criminal record.

– Chef Paul

4novels

My cookbook, Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World,  and novels are available in paperpack or Kindle on amazon.com

As an e-book on Nook

or on my website-where you can get a signed copy at: www.lordsoffun.com

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Kugelis, Potato Pudding Recipe

Lithuanian Entree

KUGELIS
(Potato Pudding Recipe)

INGREDIENTSkugelis-

5 pounds russet potatoes
12 ounces bacon
1 1/2 large white onions
1/4 cup butter
6 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 cup farina

SPECIAL UTENSILS

1 9″*13″ baking dish
or
2 8″*8″ baking dishes
or
127 1″*1″ baking dishes

Serves a lot of people. We’re talking about 7 pounds of rich food here.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes. Grate or shred potatoes. (This is some debate about the authenticity of shredding potatoes for Kugelis. After noting how long it took to merely peel the potatoes, I fired up the trusty food processor and shredded away. Yep, I’m a rebel. Born to be Wild.)

Dice bacon. Shred onions. Put bacon, onions, and butter in frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat until bacon is done to your desired level of crispness and the onions soften. Stir frequently. Hold the pan at an angle away from you while stirring. You really want bacon splatter to head away from you.

Put eggs in large mixing bowl and beat the heck out of them. Add potato, bacon/onion sauté, milk, evaporated milk, salt, pepper, and farina. Mix thoroughly with spoon.

Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour 20 minutes or until golden brown on top. Remove baking dish from oven and let cool for 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy the national dish of Lithuania.

TIDBITS

1) Pepper is used in this recipe. It is a happening spice. Pepper was first widely used in India over two millennia ago. India is one of the world’s oldest civilizations One of every seven people in the world is Indian. India has lots of trains, great food, nuclear weapons, and customer-service reps. Okay, the last one is bad.

2) Pepper traded westward to ancient Egypt. Black peppercorns were found stuffed up the nose of the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses II. Snorting, perhaps? Egypt was the dominant power in that region for hundreds of years. It’s chariots raced all over the countryside. Perhaps they wouldn’t have had to race all over if they had bothered to ask for directions, but you know men.

3) Some think Rome conquered great swaths of North Africa, Europe, and the Near East because the Romans were really cranky from constantly sneezing snorted pepper. The Roman Empire lasted so long because its subject were so down with the taste explosion pepper brought that they really didn’t mind constant taxation and civil wars.

4) Then around the 5th century AD, barbarians invaded and destroyed the Roman Empire for no good culinary reason. Lutefisk crazed Vikings pillaged everywhere. People stashed their pepper. The Vikings killed the stashers. Knowledge of pepper disappeared. The Dark Ages descended.

5) Around 13th century or so the Venetians started trade routes with India. Indian pepper once again flowed westward to Europe. Venice became the richest and mightiest city in Europe. Then they started making blinds and their economy tanked.

6) Portugal started the Great Age of Exploration. It sent fleets around Africa and to the Americas and sooner than you can say heteroskedasticity pepper graced the tables of people around the world.

7) Life’s been pretty good since then. Even the occasional global war was made tolerable by proper amounts of peppers in soldiers’ meals.

– 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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Irish Hamburgers Recipe

Irish Entree

IRISH HAMBURGERS

INGREDIENTSIrCorBB-

1 4-to-5 pound ready-to-cook corned beef brisket
6 russet potatoes
3 large carrots
1 large white onion
1/2 head cabbage
water
6 hamburger buns

SPECIALTY UTENSIL

crock pot

PREPARATION

At the crock pot’s low setting, the brisket can take 10-to-14 hours to become tender. The high setting will cut this time by about half.

Put ready-to-cook corned beef brisket in crock pot. Add water to crock pot until it covers the brisket. You may need to cut the brisket into smaller pieces depending on the size of your crock pot. Cook for 10-to-14, possibly overnight, or until brisket is tender.

Clean potatoes and carrots. Cut potatoes carrots, onions, and cabbages in slices no thicker than 1/2″ inch and add them to the crock pot. and vegetables. Add water until it covers the brisket and vegetables. Cook on low setting for about 2 hours or until vegetables are tender.

So far, this has been a simplified, but still traditional meal of corned beef. But new culinary horizons beckon. Beef burgers beget beguilingly Irish burgers, beggorah.

Put a slice of corned beef from crock pot on bun. Top that with a slice of onion and cabbage also from the crock pot. Add a squiggle of mustard and complete with top bun. A Irish burger to be sure.

Use remaining ingredients in crock pot as a traditional corned beef meal or as in the next recipe, corned-beef soup.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe uses carrots. The world famous cartoon character Bugs Bunny loved carrots.

2) Bugs Bunny was named after one of his creators at Warner Bros. studio, Buggsy Hardaway.

3) Bugs Bunny was officially born on July 27, 1940 in a rabbit warren under Ebbets Field, home of the Dodgers, in Brooklyn. Although previous incarnations occurred in the late 1930s, his official cartoon debut occurred on that date in a cartoon feature called a “Wild Hare.”

4) Bugs went on to have a illustrious cartoon career starring in several beloved shorts and even a few movies. This patriotic bunny also squared off successfully against the nefarious German and Japanese leaders of World War II. Bugs even appeared in two-minute films designed to get Americans to buy war bonds.

5) It’s possible without Bugs Bunny’s buy-war bonds films America would not have had enough funds to prosecute the war against the Axis powers.

6) And indeed, America’s fighting men were grateful. Bugs Bunny was the official mascot of at least one air training school and two air squadrons.

7) Bugsy Siegel’s story is somewhat different. Born into the real world, Bugsy rose to prominence as a bootlegger and notorious co-founder of Murder, Inc. Switching to gambling, Bugsy founded the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was gunned down in 1947.

8) There you have it. One Bugsy has made the world laugh for decades and won a world war. The other Bugsy not so much.

– 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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Simple Corned Beef Recipe

Irish Entree

SIMPLE CORNED BEEF

INGREDIENTSCornBee-

1 4-to-5 pound ready-to-cook corned beef brisket
6 russet potatoes
3 large carrots
1 large white onion
1/2 head cabbage
water

SPECIALTY UTENSIL

crock pot

PREPARATION

At the crock pot’s low setting, the brisket can take 10-to-14 hours to become tender. The high setting will cut this time by about half.

Put ready-to-cook corned beef brisket in crock pot. Add water to crock pot until it covers the brisket. You may need to cut the brisket into smaller pieces depending on the size of your crock pot. Cook for 10-to-14, possibly overnight, or until brisket is tender.

Clean potatoes and carrots. Cut potatoes carrots, onions, and cabbages in slices no thicker than 1/2″ inch and add them to the crock pot. and vegetables. Add water until it covers the brisket and vegetables. Cook on low setting for about 2 hours or until vegetables are tender. Serve to adoring guests.

This is an astoundingly versatile dish. See the following two recipes for delightful meals made out of this recipe’s leftovers.

Tell your spellbound guests corned-beef takes 10 days to prepare. This, of course, is the do-it-yourself corned-beef version. You used ready-to-eat corned beef brisket. But you needn’t tell them that.

TIDBITS

1) Potatoes make great French fries.

2) They’re nutritious and a great source of calories too.

3) They grow in the ground where they can’t be seen by hungry, foraging armies marching back and forth across peasants’ fields.

4) On July 14, 1689 Madame Farine du Blé of Poulet sur Marne noticed invading Bavarians ransacking the granary of her neighbors, the Herbes, while leaving her own field of potatoes completely untouched.

5) This fact kinda excited the peasantry of France who relied almost exclusively on food for eating.

6) Frederick the Great of Prussia noticed this fact as well. He insisted that all the Prussian peasants plant potatoes.

7) And boy, those peasants were glad they did. Massive French, Austrian, and Russian armies crisscrossed the Prussian kingdom from 1756 to 1763 carting off all the wheat they could find. But the Prussian peasants didn’t starve.

8) Why? These farmers simply waited for the invading soldiers to leave, dug up their potatoes, and cooked them. And if the peasants also had the proper spices and deep fryers, they dined on papas rellena, Peruvian stuffed potatoes.

9) When individual peasants don’t starve, the country as a whole doesn’t starve. A well-fed nation can afford to feed it armies in the field. And those Prussian armies did really well earning both victory and survival at the end of the Seven Years War.

10) Prussia united Germany in 1871. A united Germany caused World War I. A united Germany caused World War II. Both wars were unarguably unpleasant.

11) So think about that when you are asked, “Do you want fries with 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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Suaasat – Greenlander Soup

Greenlander Soup

SUAASAT

INGREDIENTSSuaasat-

1 chicken breast (1 pound reindeer if you can get it)
1 onion
1 carrot
1 quart water
1/2 cup pearl barley
1/4 cup millet
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
1/2 teaspoon sage
1/2 teaspoon thyme

Makes 6 bowls

PREPARATION

Chop reindeer meat or chicken into 1/2″ cubes. Dice onions and carrots. Add cubes, onions, carrots, water, barley, millet, coriander, salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, and thyme to large pot. Cook soup on medium heat for about 1 hour or until chicken or reindeer cubes are fully cooked and barley and millet are tender.

TIDBITS

1) A Viking called Gunnbjorn discovered Greenland in 876.

2) Why does Gunnbjorn get all the credit for discovery when thousands of Eskimos had been living there for hundreds of years?

3) Because Gunnbjorn sounds a lot like GummiTM bears and everyone likes those.

4) Leif Erikkson discovered North America in 1000.

5) Why did Leif get all the credit when North America was discovered thousands of years by peoples crossing the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska thousands of years before?

6) Because Leif sounds exactly like leaf. The maple leaf grows on the maple tree. Maple trees produce maple syrup. Everybody loves maple syrup.

7) Proper branding is a must for all discoverers.

8) Erikkson is variant of Erickson. Erickson is the name of my Swedish born grandparents who settled in America about 100 years ago.

9) I don’t believe the Erikksons and Ericksons ever relinquished their claim of discovery.

10) So North America quite possibly belongs to me.

11) As long as North Americans love maple syrup.

– 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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Bombay Potatoes (Aloo) recipe

Indian Entree

BOMBAY POTATOES
(Aloo)

INGREDIENTSBombPot-

4 brown potatoes
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 white onion

1 tomato
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon ginger powder (freshly ground is preferred)
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 tablespoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
2 teaspoons coriander
1 bay leaf
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil.

PREPARATION

Put enough water in pot to cover 4 potatoes. While water is heating to a boil, wash potatoes. Cut each potato into about 12 pieces. Mince onion. After water comes to a boil, add potatoes and salt to pot. Boil until potatoes are done but still firm to the fork. This takes about 6-to-10 minutes.

Dice tomato. Put .vegetable oil and onion in frying pan. Sauté on medium-high for about 5 minutes or until onions are soft. Reduce heat to medium-low and add tomato, ginger, chili, cumin, garam masala, mustard, sesame seeds, coriander, bay leaf, lemon juice, and sesame oil. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add potato pieces. Stir potatoes gently until they are fully coated with oil and spices and soft to the fork.

TIDBITS

1) Ginger has been in the kitchen for 5,000 years.

2) Ginger, the spice, not anyone named Ginger. Goodness.

3) Ginger has been and still is used for curing upset stomaches and motion sickness.

4) Ginger reduces headaches by blocking prostoglandis, whatever that is, responsible for inflaming blood vessels in the brain.

5) Ginger brings other health benefits. It’s a truly amazing spice.

6) Ginger Rogers brought amazing grace and style to the movies. She really could act and dance.

7) Roy Rogers was a famous cowboy actor. He also owned a chain of restaurants called Roy Rogers.

8) They served hamburgers. You could put your fixin’s on them. I don’t think any of them were ginger.

– 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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Shakshuka, Israeli Breakfast Soup

Israeli Breakfast Soup

Shakshuka

IINGREDIENTSshakshu-

1 sweet red pepper
2 hot green chiles
1 white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
24 ounces tomato sauce
1 tablespoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs

PREPARATION

Mince red pepper, green chiles, onion, and garlic. Put in skillet along with olive oil. Sauté on medium high heat for about 5 minutes or until onion is tender.

Add tomato sauce, oregano, and salt. Heat on high until sauce begins to boil, stirring frequently. Turn heat down to low. Add eggs. Cook until eggs are done to your satisfaction. Stir occasionally. This soup is often eaten directly from skillet.

Simple and quick with an impressive sounding name.

TIDBITS

1) People made soup as early as 6,000 BC.

2) Even then kids said, “Is it ready, yet?”

3) In 1772 BC Hammurabi of Babylon set down his famous set of 282 laws. Most of them dealt with business contracts and the family. None of them dealt with soup.

4) Current Nebraska law states a bar owner must be making soup at the same time beer is being sold.

5) So we’ve addressed the glaring soup admission in Hammurabi’s Code.

6) It took humanity over 3,700 years to do this.

7) In the meantime we’ve: discovered America via the land bridge from Asia, invented the printing press, and witnessed the creation and demise of the Twinkie.

– 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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Tomato Potato Soup Provençale Recipe

French Soup

Tomato Potato Soup Provençale

INGREDIENTSPoToPrS-

1 white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 russet potatoes
6 Roma tomatoes
32 ounces chicken broth
1 tablespoon red wine
1 1/2 tablespoons herbes de Provence

PREPARATION

Mince onion and garlic. Put onion, garlic, and olive oil into frying pan. Sauté on medium high for 3-to-5 minutes or until onion is tender. Put onion and garlic into soup pot.

Peel and chop potatoes into cubes small enough to go into food processor. Mince potatoes. Mince tomatoes. Add to soup pot: potatoes, tomato, chicken broth, red wine, and herbes de Provence. Cook soup on high until it starts to boil. Turn down heat to warm and simmer for 40 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) The world’s best tomato festival, La Tomatina, is held in Bunol, Spain. It occurs on the last Wednesday in August. Up to 100,000 people attend. Why? Because it’s fun!

2) The festival hosts the world’s biggest tomato fight. Yippee. Up to 30,000 people participate, hurling some 200,000 overripe tomatoes at each other.

3) But just try throwing a rotten tomato at home or at the school cafeteria. Or at your local mayor or police officer for that matter.

4) And you get to eat fantastic tomato-based dishes before this culinary melee.

5) I wanna go there. I wanna go there. I wanna go 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, food, humor, international, recipes, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bacon Buttermilk Pancakes Recipe

American Breakfast

BACON BUTTERMILK PANCAKES

INGREDIENTSbutt-

15 slices bacon (about 1 pound)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup cultured buttermilk blend
4 cups water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs

You can, of course, buy buttermilk instead of buttermilk blend, but your buttermilk will go bad if you don’t use it right away.

SPECIALTY UTENSILS

electric mixer
griddle or skillet

PREPARATION

Cut bacon strips in half. Fry bacon on medium-high heat until it starts to get crispy. Put bacon on towel-covered plate.

Melt butter. Use “batter” setting on electric mixer, or beater, to combine buttermilk blend, water, eggs, and butter. Combine in a second large mixing bowl: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pour the contents of the second bowl into the first mixing bowl. Mix together with fork until just blended.

Fire up the griddle to 350 degrees. Use a 1/2-cup ladle to pour your batter onto the griddle. Put two half bacon strips in batter. Cook for 1 3/4 minutes on the first side and for 1 1/2 minutes on the second side or until brown on both sides.

Makes about 16 8-inch diameter pancakes. Come join bacon mania.

TIDBITS

1) Bacon makes you smart.

2) The choline, whatever that is, in bacon stimulates fetal brain development.

3) China began preserving and salting pork bellies around 1,500 B.C.

4) China was one of the first places on Earth to develop a complex, thriving civilization. It is the most populous nation in the world.

5) The Greeks were one of the first peoples in the West to preserve and salt pork. The Greeks developed modern Western philosophy.

6) The Romans preserved and salted pork. They built the largest empire Europe and the Mediterranean world has ever seen. America’s founding fathers consciously based our system of government on the Roman model.

7) Americans eat bacon all the time. America’s economy is the largest in the world.

8) But other countries’ economies are catching up. Their peoples are eating more bacon.

 

– 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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Hot Dog Quesadillas À La Provençal Recipe

Fusion Entree

Hot Dog Quesadillas À La Provençal

INGREDIENTSTurkQue-

no-stick spray
4 turkey dogs
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence
1 Roma tomato
1/2 white onion
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
4 flour tortillas

PREPARATION

This fusion entree comes from my fevered imagination heated up by a surplus of tortillas and herbes de Provence. Oui arriba.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut turkey dogs into halves lengthwise. Coat hot-dogs with spray. Put herbes de Provence on plate. Roll turkey dogs on plate until they are all covered with herbes de Provence. Mince tomato and white onion. Sprinkle tomato, onion, and cheese evenly over two tortillas. Complete the quesadillas with another tortilla over each of the two-covered tortillas.

Put the quesadillas on a sprayed cookie sheet. Put in oven. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the quesadillas are crispy or start to brown. Cut quesadillas into halves and serve.

TIDBITS

1) There are apparently no fun facts about quesadillas. You’d think something that looks like a Frisbee would have all sorts of things listed.

2) But the Frisbee does. The Frisbee originally was developed by Morrison and Franscioni in 1948.

3) The inspiration for the design came from the pie pan that Morrison used for the pies he sold.

4) Millions and millions of Frisbees have been sold.

5) Just because Morrison and his wife tossed a pie pan around after eating a pie.

6) Unfortunately, other kitchen implements do not make good tossing toys. Knives and anything made of glass come especially to mind.

– 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, food, humor, international, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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