food

Peanut Sauce (pinda saus)

Posted on May 15, 2014 by pauldelancey

Dutch appetizer

PEANUT SAUCE
(pinda saus)

INGREDIENTSPeanutSauce-

1 garlic clove
½ teaspoon lemon juice
¼ teaspoon lemongrass
¾ cup milk
¾ cup smooth peanut butter
4 tablespoons soy sauce
¼ teaspoon brown sugar
¼ teaspoon sambal oelek (omit if you can’t find it or desire a less spicy sauce)

PREPARATION

Mince garlic clove. Add garlic, lemon juice, and lemongrass to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for about 3 minutes or until garlic softens. Stir frequently. Add milk, peanut butter, soy sauce, brown sugar, and sambal oelek. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes or until it just starts to boil. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes until mixture thickens. Stir frequently.

Goes well with: sticky rice, satays, bami goreng, egg rolls, and loempias.

TIDBITS

1) The Netherlands supplies 70% of the world’s bacon. Yay!

2) The Spanish Inquistion sentenced everyone in the Netherlands to death in 1568 . Tough love, you bet.

3) The Netherlands supplies 70% of the world’s bacon. Woot!

4) Amsterdam is home to the greatest number of museums in any one city, including ones dedicated to sex museums. Honey, I’m just going to the museum to improve my mind.

5) The Netherlands supplies 70% of the world’s bacon. Thank you, Netherlands.

7) Amsterdam’s coffee shops can sell you up to 5 grams of cannabis. And then you’ll be hungry for … bacon!

8) The Netherlands supplies 70% of the world’s bacon. Satisfy your bacon munchies here.

9) When not producing bacon, the Dutch are known to indulge in engineering marvels and the arts.

– 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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Bubble and Squeak

Posted on April 5, 2014 by pauldelancey

British Entree

BUBBLE AND SQUEAK

INGREDIENTSBubble&Squeak-

4 potatoes
2 tablespoons butter (2 more teaspoons later)
½ head cabbage
2 celery stalks
1 onion
2 tablespoons butter
4 ounces bacon
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt

PREPARATION

Peel potatoes. Cut each potato into eight pieces. Put potato pieces into large pot. Add enough water to cover potato bits. Bring water to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes or until potato is tender. Drain potatoes. Add 2 tablespoons butter to pot with potato pieces. Mash potatoes with potato masher.

While potatoes simmer, thinly slice cabbage. Put cabbage with enough water to cover and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes or until cabbage is tender. Dice celery, and onion. Add onion, celery, and 2 tablespoons butter to large skillet. Sauté onion and celery for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add bacon to frying pan. Fry bacon on medium-high heat or until bacon starts to turn crispy. Remove bacon and press with paper towels to remove grease. Cut bacon into 1″ squares.

Add mashed potato, cabbage, bacon, celery, onion, pepper, and salt to large skillet. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes or until bottom (The mixture in the skillet, not your bottom. Goodness.) turns golden brown. Turn mixture over and cook for another 5 minutes or until it browns again on the bottom.

TIDBITS

1) This traditional British dish is named after the bubbling and squeaking sounds it makes while being cooked. The earliest known recipe comes from Maria Rundell, who made it in 1806. No, I do not know what she did in 1805. Still, knowing this fact will give you an advantage over the other contests in JeopardyTM when the Bubble and Squeak category comes up.

2) Bubble and squeak is also Cockney rhyming slang for Greek. Just like fashion and fad is Cockney for iPad. Similarly, Pow and socko for taco, Sang froid and calm for A-bomb, symphonies and coda for soda, large rat and busy bee for reality TV, Jeb and Jethro for cilantro, grovel and beg for nutmeg, mite and midge for fridge, bondsman and post bail for junk mail, and, of course, tasty and new for chicken cordon bleu.

– 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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Almond Pork Stir Fry

Posted on March 27, 2014 by pauldelancey

Chinese Entree

ALMOND PORK STIR FRY

INGREDIENTSAlmondChicken-

1 pound pork loins
½ red onion
2 scallions
½ cup blanched, silvered almonds
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 ½ tablespoons chicken stock
1 tablespoon sherry
1 teaspoon sugar
1 pound bean sprouts
1 teaspoon Chinese five spices
1/2 tablespoon freshly grated ginger

PREPARATION

Cut pork into ½” cubes. Dice red onion and scallions. Rinse bean sprouts. Add almond, red onion, scallion, and soy sauce to wok or pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently.

Add pork, chicken stock, sherry, sugar, bean sprouts, Chinese five spices, and ginger to pan. Cook for 5 minutes on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until pork is no longer pink inside. (X-ray vision would be useful here. If you aren’t a super hero, it’s okay to slice open a pork cube and look.)

TIDBITS

1) In 1764, Spain worried about Russian encroachment on the west coast of America planted almond trees along El Camino Real (The Royal Road) from San Diego to San Francisco.

2) These trees did not significantly deter the Russian military which was generally equipped with ships, horses, cannon, and muskets.

3) The Spanish then tried planting all manner of cacti in Arizona. This failed as well. The Russians weren’t interested in Arizona and the cacti proved remarkably vulnerable to flanking maneuvers.

4) In 1769, the governor of California, Don Antonio Pico de Gallo, came up with the happy idea of building missions along El Camino and staffing them with priests and soldiers. The Russians saw that the price of conquering the Golden State would be too high and left.

5) President Clinton ate almonds at both his inaugurations. Some say he did this to send a message to the Russians, but it is more likely he just like to eat them.

6) Eat the almonds, not the Russians, for goodness sake.

– 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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Split Pea Soup

Posted on January 15, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Soup

SPLIT PEA SOUP

INGREDIENTSSplitPea-

1 medium carrot
1 celery stalk
1 large onion
2 tablespoons butter.
9 cups water
2 cups (1 pound) dried split peas
1 teaspoon marjoram
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon pepper

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Mince carrot, celery, and onion. Add carrot, celery, onion, and butter to Dutch oven. Sauté veggies on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add split peas, water, marjoram, bay leaf, thyme, and pepper. Bring soup to boil on high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about an hour or until peas are tender.

Transfer as much soup to blender as will fit. Liquefy or puree soup. Repeat for all batches on soup. Serve and enjoy. Soup crackers and ham go well with this soup.

TIDBITS

1) Gregor Mendel, used pea plants to prove his theory of dominant and recessive genes.

2) His published results were quite close to his hypothesis. In fact his results were so near that one can use statistics to show he fudged his outcomes to prove his point. Bad Mendel.

3) If I had a time machine, I could have gone back in time and convinced Mendel to publish the actual results. He still would have been famous for his ground breaking work without becoming a homework problem for students in statistics. I mean what did Mendel’s son think of all of this?

4) Felix Mendelsson, the great composer of his violin concert and incidental music for A Midsummer’s Night Dream, is probably not the son of Gregor Mendel as Felix’s birth occurred in 1809 and Gregor’s didn’t come into the world until 1822. Geneticists and biologists concur with this assessment with near unanimity.

– 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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Great Culinary Mishaps Along The World’s Roads

Posted on October 19, 2013 by pauldelancey
“All the pig carcasses and the 86 live pigs were carried off, while the local police reportedly declined to intervene.”
.

– 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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Powegian Smoothie

Posted on October 14, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

POWEGIAN SMOOTHIE

INGREDIENTSPowSmoo-

2 cups plain yogurt
1 cup milk
1 cup mixed berries (strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries)
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup sugar

SPECIALTY APPLIANCE

blender

PREPARATION

Put yogurt, milk, mixed berries, honey, and sugar in blender. (Milk will always refer to cow’s milk. If I mean another sort of milk, such as goat’s milk, or yak’s milk, I will specify it. I hope I never come across a recipe that uses yak’s milk, because I don’t know where to find it either.) Blend at “milkshake” setting for about 30 seconds or until thoroughly blended. Woo hoo, tasty and simple.
TIDBITS

1) Yogurt has been around for 4,500 years.

2) However, don’t get yogurt this old. Look at the expiration dates on the yogurt containers.

3) Plain yogurt can be made from any mammal’s milk, including the yak and the camel.

4) A store in Britain is selling ice cream made from human breast milk. Not sure about this.

5) Eating yogurt can reduce bad breath. It still is easier though to pop a mint in your mouth before kissing a date than to run to your car and eat a pint of yogurt.

– 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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Mayonnaise

Posted on October 6, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

MAYONNAISE

INGREDIENTSmayonnaise-

1 medium egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder

SPECIAL ITEM

blender

PREPARATION

Put egg and yolk of another egg in blend. Blend on mix setting for 30 seconds. With the blender still on mix, slowly add vegetable oil. Blend until mixture becomes thick and creamy. Add apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, salt, white pepper, and mustard powder. Blend for 2 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) People have been using vinegar for 10,000 years. One wonders what for? Couldn’t have been for Easter eggs. No Easter back then. No domesticated chickens either. Could prehistoric people have been following herds of wild chickens? Maybe this exciting thought was the inspiration for the wildly popular TV series, Rawhide. “Head ‘em up, move ‘em out.”

2) And, of course, there is no archaeological–Woo hoo, spelled it right on the first try–evidence that primitive society produced apple cider vinegar, salt, white pepper, and mustard powder, all necessary for the making of mayonnaise.

3) It is not possible to make a proper Venezuelan hot dog without mayonnaise, which we have seen early hunter/gatherer societies did not have. This absence alone hindered the development on the modern Venezuelan nation state for nearly 10,000 years.

4) Pantyhose lasts longer when rinsed with diluted white vinegar. Did dawn-of-time women use pantyhose? What if they didn’t have vinegar? Visit the International Vinegar Museum in Roslyn, South Dakota and find out.

– 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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Korean Army Base Stew

Posted on October 3, 2013 by pauldelancey

Korean Entree

ARMY BASE STEW
(Budae Jjigae)

INGREDIENTSArmyBaseStew-

1 12-ounce can SPAMTM
4 hot dogs
1 12-ounce package firm tofu
1/2 yellow onion
3 stalks green onions
2 cloves garlic
4 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons gochuchang (hot Korean paste)
1 tablespoon gochucharu (or red pepper flakes)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil

1 3-ounce package ramen (don’t use spice packet)

PREPARATION

Slice SPAM, hot dogs, and tofu into 1/2″ cubes or slices. Dice yellow onion, green onions, and garlic cloves. Add all ingredients except ramen to large pot. Bring to boil on high heat, about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Reduce to low heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add ramen (no spice backet) and simmer on low 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. It’s spicy and enjoyable.

TIDBITS

1) Koreans love SPAM. Who knew? Okay, smarty pants, besides Koreans.

2) Many Koreans went hungry during and just after the Korean War. Thousands and thousands averted starvation only by getting food from nearby American army bases. The most prevalent gift from the GIs were cans of SPAM. People there are still grateful for this food and SPAM has been adopted into Korean cuisine.

3) I’ve heard that SPAM is popular in the Philippines as well because of the SPAM American soldiers brought with them in 1944 to 1946. My father was stationed in the Philippines after the War as part of America’s SPAM diplomacy.

4) South Korea is a firm ally of America and a strong trading partner. North Korea, however, threatens us with nuclear attack. Why? Because America never got a chance to get its SPAM bearing armies into that land. SPAM brings peace and amity everywhere. Wonderful SPAM, glorious SPAM.

– 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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Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dogs

Posted on September 9, 2013 by pauldelancey

American Entree

BACON-WRAPPED HOT DOGS

INGREDIENTSBaconWrapHD-

1 onion
1 tomato
1 green bell pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 hot dogs
8 bacon slices
1 jalapeno pepper
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
8 buns
no-stick spray

PREPARATION

Dice onion, tomato, bell pepper, and jalapeno pepper. Put vegetable oil, onion, bell pepper, and jalapeno in skillet. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Set aside.

Wrap a bacon slice around each hot dog. Tuck in the ends of the bacon slices so they don’t unwrap. (Or use toothpicks.) Spray new skillet. Add bacon-wrapped hot dogs to skillet. Fry on medium-high heat for 5-to-10 minutes or until bacon is crispy and hot dogs are done. Turn bacon-wrapped hot dogs frequently to ensure even cooking.

While hot dogs are frying, toast the buns. Spread ketchup, mayonnaise, and mustard on buns.. Sprinkle buns with diced tomatoes. Add bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Close and eat. Yum!

TIDBITS

1) A chipotle is a ripe, smoked jalapeno. A salmon that has been smoked is a smoked salmon.

2) A jalapeno pepper went to outer space in 1982. I have never been to outer space. I have been bested by a jalapeno pepper. It’s quite humbling.

3) However, as far as I know smoked salmon has never been to the moon or on the Space Shuttle. Please don’t tell me if it has; I don’t think my ego could handle it.

4 ) Don’t drink water after eating jalapenos. The water merely spreads the heat around. Drink milk. Milk blocks the pain receptors in your mouth. Got milk?

5) Jalapeno-salmon burgers are a popular entree. Someday, you will be able to order them in space. Be sure to have a lid for your milk. Milk gets everywhere in zero-gravity.

– Chef Paul

– 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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Arrowroot Custard

Posted on September 2, 2013 by pauldelancey

St. Vincentian Dessert

ARROWROOT CUSTARD

INGREDIENTSArrowrootCust-

3 tablespoons arrowroot
1 tablespoon milk (3 1/2 cups more later)
3 1/2 cups milk
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks

PREPARATION

Add arrowroot and 1 tablespoon milk to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until paste forms. Add 3 1/2 cups milk to pot. Cook milk on high heat until milk just starts bubbling. Stir CONSTANTLY. Add arrowroot paste from mixing bowl to pot and stir. Remove pot from burner. Turn heat down to low.

(Milk burns quickly. Anybody who comes by and sees you intent on boiling milk will say, “Careful, milk burns in a hurry! They cannot help it. It’s inevitable as falling asleep in the back row at a lecture for theoretical economics.)

Add sugar to pot. Mix with spoon until sugar dissolves. Return pot to burner. Simmer on low heat for 3 minutes. Remove pot from burner. Add in vanilla extract and egg yolks. Mix with whisk or fork until egg yolk blend in completely. Allow to cool. (The heat in the mix will cook the yolks enough during this time.)

Drink as much as you dare before sharing with guests. It’s really tasty.

TIDBITS

1) An anagram for “arrowroot custard” is “Coward roars, ‘Trout!’”

2) Arrowroot is a starch-rich underground creeping rhizome.

3) There was a 1964 movie called The Creeping Terror. Leonard Maltin, the film critic, gave it a “bomb” rating. His Classic Movie Guide said, “Awful horror movie, poor on every conceivable (and inconceivable) level.” I saw it. The monster looks a lot like a giant Denver omelette.

4) If that sort of horror movie can get made, why not The Creeping Rhizome? Just saying. You could have The Underground Creeping Rhizome but that would be way too scary.

– 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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