international

Lomo Saltado

Posted on February 8, 2021 by pauldelancey

Peruvian Entree

LOMO SALTADO

INGREDIENTS

½ pound French fries
1 aji amarillo chile or jalapeno
½ red onion
1 large tomato
¼ cup fresh cilantro
1 pound sirloin or ribeye
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 tablespoons vinegar

SPECIAL UTENSILS

mandoline
wok or large pan.

Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cook French fries according to instructions on package. While French fries cook, use mandoline or knife to cut aji amarillo into ¼” rings and red onion and and tomato into ½” slices. Dice cilantro. Slice sirloin into ¼”-thick strips. Rub pepper and salt onto sirloin strips.

Add oil to wok. Heat oil using high heat until a tiny bit of onion in the oil starts to dance. Add sirloin strips. (Don’t let the strips touch each other. You might have to cook in batches.) Sauté each batch at high heat for 2 minutes or until meat browns. Stir occasionally. Add browned batches of sirloin strips, aji amarillo, red onion, and tomato. Reduce heat to medium and sauté for 3 minutes or until tomato starts to soften. Stir frequently. Add soy sauce, vinegar, and French fries. Sauté for 3 minutes or until sirloin is done to your liking. Garnish with cilantro.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe is from Peru. Peru is a country on the planet Earth. The outer part of Earth is its crust. The crust covers oceans of hot magma. Volcanoes occasionally spew out magma. The magma that flows along the ground, lava. incinerates all its path. The magma that flies into the air blocks the Sun and kills crops. When that happens, we get a winter that lasts for years. Mass extinctions occur. Peru is part of the Earth’s crust. Thus, when we wish for Peru to disappear because our luggage has disappeared when we flew out of the country, we are indirectly wishing for a large section of our planet’s crust to disappear. Then all of the horrible things in the above tidbit would happen. We’d all die! That’s bad. Be careful what you wish for!

– 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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Beef Rendang

Posted on February 7, 2021 by pauldelancey

Indonesian Entree

BEEF RENDANG

INGREDIENTS

4 red chiles
1 inch galangal or ginger root
5 garlic cloves
¾ teaspoon peppercorns
6 shallots
1 inch turmeric root
1 stalk lemongrass
2 pounds beef tenderloin or top round
2 tablespoons oil
1 inch cinnamon stick
½ tablespoon salt
3 kaffir lime leaves or ½ teaspoon lime zest
1 salam leaf or bay leaf
3 13-ounce cans coconut milk

SPECIAL UTENSIL

spice grinder

Serves 4. Takes 2 hours 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Seed red chiles. Add red chile, galangal, garlic cloves, peppercorns, shallots, and turmeric to spice grinder. Grind until these spices become paste. Remove and discard upper ⅔rd of lemongrass stalk. Remove and discard the three outer layers. Dice remaining lemongrass. Cut beef into 1″ cubes.

Add spice paste and oil to work or large pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 2 minutes or until paste becomes fragrant. Stir constantly. Add all remaining ingredients to wok. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 1 hour. Stir enough to prevent burning. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 45 minutes or until the milky part of the liquid is gone, leaving a little bit of coconut oil. (Most of the liquid should be evaporated.) Stir enough to prevent burning. Simmer on low for another 15 minutes or until beef and sauce turn brown. Remove cinnamon stick, bay leaf, and kaffir lime leaves. Goes well with rice.

TIDBITS

1) The dish into the above picture is served on, well, a dish. The dish is round.

2) Why is it not square?

3 )Because you cannot roll something is square

4) Why does it matter if you can roll a dish? After all, if you rolled the above dish before you ate, you lost the food.

5) Clearly, the round shape was designed for something else in mind.

6) What was that?

7) One theory, advanced by culinary, archeologists, is that primitive caveman invented the stone FrisbeeTM.

8) They didn’t call it the Frisbee, of course. It’s named after the Frisbee Pie Company which sold its wares in round pie dishes.

9) Culinary historians believe most prehistoric companies were called Ogg, Inc. because nearly all cavemen were named Ogg. Cavewomen were called Ogg.

10) Therefore, these ancient humans probably named their invention the OggTM.

11) Isn’t surprising early humankind possessed the knowledge to incorporate and trademark things?

12) Alas though, the Ogg proved a dismal failure. If you didn’t catch it, it hit you in the head and that was that.

13) Indeed, culinary historians believe widespread Ogg playing extinguished the Neanderthals.

14) After a much briefer fling with the sport, the Cro Magnons abandoned Ogg tossing.

15) Tossing the Ogg around was supposed to be a fun leisure time activity. But making the circular Ogg took up all their free time. So, what was the point of making Oggs?

16) None, the Cro Magnons concluded. So, they went on to make spears, axes, animal skins, and the like. Humanity went on not quite a talc age, which is a bit below a golden age.

17) Throwing round things became a popular sport in Ancient Greek Olympics. Physically fit from throwing the much lighter and metallic Ogg–by then called the discus–Greeks explored the entire known world.

18) The Romans, inheritors of Greek civilization, conquered the entire Mediterranean and much of northwestern Europe. The Roman built roads to facilitate rapid deployment of legions from crisis point to another. And we all know, the Roman legionnaire loved to throw the discus.

19) The Roman army passed on discuss throwing to the natives wherever they went. The natives became buff as well. So, the Roman conquest proved to be quite the good thing for the locals once everybody got past the initial wholesale slaughter-and-enslavement phase. And ever since then we have lived in a round-thingy-throwing golden age.

20) But it’s sobering to think how the Cro Magnons, the last remaining branch of humankind, came to throwing themselves into extinction.

– 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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Medfouna

Posted on February 7, 2021 by pauldelancey

Moroccan Entree

MEDFOUNA
(Marrakech Pizza)

INGREDIENTS – DOUGH

2¼ teaspoons yeast
¾ cup warm water
1¾ cups all-purpose flour (4 more tablespoons later)
½ cup wheat flour or semolina
¾ teaspoon salt

INGREDIENTS – FILLING
1 onion
1 red chile
⅓ cup fresh parsley
1 teaspoon coriander
½ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon sea salt or salt (¼ teaspoon more later)
1 pound steak or lamb (minced or ground)

INGREDIENTS – FINAL

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 egg
¼ teaspoon sea salt or salt

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater
plastic wrap or kitchen towels
baking sheet
parchment paper

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

Add yeast and warm water to 1st large mixing bowl. Stir with fork until yeasts dissolves. Let sit for 10 minutes or until yeast becomes bubbly. Gradually add in 1¾ cups all-purpose flour, wheat flour, and salt. Stir with fork until well blended. Use medium setting for electric beater on flour/yeast mix until you get a smooth and elastic ball of dough.

Divide dough into two equal balls. Place in bowls and cover with plastic wrap or kitchen towels. Let rise for 45 minutes or until dough doubles in size.

PREPARATION – FILLING

While dough rises. mince onion. Seed and dice red chile. Dice parsley. Add all filling ingredients to 2nd large mixing bowl. Mix well with hands until well blended.

PREPARATION – FINAL

Preheat oven to 360 degrees. Dust flat surface with 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour. Roll out one dough ball until it’s a circle 11″ across. Cover baking sheet with parchment paper. Put 11″ dough circle on parchment paper. Poke the circle 10 times with a fork. Spread filing over 11″ circle, leaving 1″ uncovered around the edges.

Dust flat surface with 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour. Roll out remaining dough ball into an 11″ circle. Place this 11″ dough circle on top of filling. Dip fingers in water and press edges together to form a seal. Beat egg. Spread egg on top. Sprinkle with sea salt. Bake at 360 degrees for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) In 1801, William Playfair ordered medfouna in a small cafe in while in Marrakech. He sliced his pizza into four pieces. He ate a slice. It was delicious. Playfair gazed at the three remaining pieces. The proportion of the slices equaled the ratios of the Ottoman Empire that were in Europe, Asia, and Africa! He called his startling idea the “pizza-pie chart,” shortened afterward to “pie chart.”

2) You might think his idea would have sparked little interest among Britain’s scientific community. But no, that’s all the island nation’s greatest minds could talk about. They’d gone pie-chart mad.

4) So much so that the British scientists abandoned all research on the not as sexy topic of time travel. That’s too bad for King George III’s redcoats. For if Britain had had time travel, they could have gone forward to the 20th century and bought back machine guns, howitzers, jet fighters, and all sorts of bombers. It’s difficult to see how the French army of the early 19th century could have stood up to all of that, even with the element of surprise.

5) But the pie-chart mania precluded the development of all modern weaponry. The Napoleonic Wars dragged on for fourteen more bloody years. The British public blamed the pie chart. Whereas, pie charts were once found on every street in London, by 1816 they were all gone.

7) Pie charts came back during the Crimean War when Nurse Florence Nightingale taught the idea to her bandaged patients. It was her way of helping them pass the time. Pie charts died out when the war ended and Britain closed all its pie-chart hospitals in Crimea.

8) Pie charts remained unloved when World War II rolled around. With no pie charts to distract them, British boffins created one dazzling breakthrough after another, such as radar and the Spitfire. Enabled by this technology, the British defeated the Nazi War machine. Now, of course, we have both spiffy weapons and pie charts, but only because today’s scientists have learned to specialize.

– 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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Good Arctic Eats – Uummannaq

Posted on February 6, 2021 by pauldelancey

Good Arctic Eats – Uummannaq

Do you like to eat well, but you’re an introvert? Do you find social distancing difficult in your crowded, bustling metropolis? Well, I have the place for you. It’s Uummannaq in northern Greenland. It’s location is a perfect who ache for Greenlandic cuisine but find Nuuk, Greenland just too darn far south.
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There is only one restaurant  listed in TripAdvisor.  This is because there’s only one restaurant in town or, as I like to think, its food beats the pants of all the other restaurants. Perhaps Uummanaq has enormous problems retaining Michelin-quality chefs as the great Parisian restaurants keep stealing them away. Who can say for sure? I like to think so.
This restaurant, the only one worthy enough to be listed in Trip Advisor, is Cafemma. It’s reputed to be easy to find, although I would have thought nearly every place that far north would be easy to locate.  It’s also the place to go if you’re in Uummannaq. But you can go as well. Hop on those planes, probably at least four, and go there. Enjoy its classic food. Take in the town’s wondrous views of a fjord and magnificent mountains. Spend the night there. Cafemma has rooms to stay in as well. So forget about rush-hour commutes from your hotel to your dining experience..

 

Uumnannaq’s restaurant

The population of Uumannaq is 1,407 when you are not there and 1,408 when you are.

The most exhilarating tour is the Living in Nature as An Inuit.  You’ll be hunting and fishing just an Inuit would. It’s a seven-day adventure where you get from place by dogsled. It also costs $4,050, but it really is a once in a lifetime experience. Heads up, it’s not wheel chair accessible.

But fear not. There’s a four-wheel drive excursion. and can take your pick of tours that cruise the harbor and the neighboring fjords.

For those who need to flee the crowd of the town, for those who wish to catch their own meal, but want to stay close to home, I certainly recommend an ice-fishing tour. Sure, you could do it yourself, but do you really want to lug your all your gear and your ice-fishing hut from Miami? Then you’d have to get all that out onto the ice. Yes, take the tour. You’ll be glad you did. And boy, oh boy, won’t your fresh fish taste good?

Dog sledding, ice fishing, cruises, super fresh fish, what more do you want? And Northern lights? Uummannaq has that too, usually, at least sometimes.

As always, “Good eating. Good traveling.”

– 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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Saag Aloo

Posted on February 5, 2021 by pauldelancey

Indian Entree

SAAG ALOO

INGREDIENTS

½ tablespoon black or brown mustard seeds or combination
3 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
2 green chiles
1 inch ginger root
1 medium onion
2 garlic cloves
1 tomato
1½ pounds potatoes
10 ounces spinach
½ teaspoon coriander
½ tablespoon garam masala
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup water

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour.

PREPARATION

Seed and mince green chiles. Mince ginger and onion. Dice garlic cloves and tomato. Peel and cut potatoes into ½” cubes. Add ghee, potato, chile, ginger, onion, and garlic cloves to large pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion and garlic soften. Stir frequently. Add mustard seeds to second pan. Reduce heat to medium and toast for 2 minutes or until they splutter and pop. Stir frequently.

Add toasted mustard seeds, coriander, garam masala, pepper, salt, and water to pan with potato cubes. Cook at medium heat for 5 minutes. Add tomato. Reduce heat to low-medium and cook for 5 minutes or until liquid evaporates. Add spinach evenly over potato cubes. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes or until potato cubes are tender. Stir gently and just enough to prevent burning.

TIDBITS

1) Look at these two still-life representations The one on the left was painted by Vincent van Gogh. Ponder on his distressing lack of accuracy. The one on the right, shown also above, was taken by me. Regale in its crisp definition. Which one would you rather own, I ask you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

– 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 Arctic Eats – Nuuk, Greenland

Posted on February 3, 2021 by pauldelancey

Great Arctic Eats – Nuuk, Greenland

Who doesn’t yearn for the good eats of Greenland? But if you’re like me, you’ll find no Nuuk cooking near you. Even trying a good local Greenlandic restaurant is often an exercise in futility. You really have to fly to Nuuk to sample its cuisine.  And here I am to highlight the towns exciting restaurants.
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The highest rated restaurant according to TripAdvisor carries the rather exciting name of Charoen Porn. Charoen specializes in Asian and Thai cuisine. The red fish curry is said to be amazing. It does seem a bit of effort to go all the way to Greenland for Asian food, but if you live there it’s just the place for it. And you know, Porn.
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The most acclaimed seafood is at Sarfalik.
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You should also consider going to Qooqqut Nuan, whose name implies true fish a la Greenland. Gaze at a beautiful waterfall while fishermen catch cod for your meal.

Find the best beer at Godthaab Bryghus.  One person couldn’t find the bar, perhaps the beer drinking started before leaving the hotel.

Want free wifi? Then make you way to Cafe Wok, the only eatery that has it.

“I want pizza,” you say. “But I want Filipino food,” says your date. Wait! You’re both right at Mary’s Kitchen.

IGGU serves the best Greenlandic pizza.

Brugseni Nuuk is a specialty food market and has a little bit of everything.

Nuuk’s restaurants

Fjord lovers will certainly want to tour the magnificent and oh so nearby fjords.

Exercise lovers really must take the town’s two-hour walking tour. The single person will find its cost a tad pricey at $632. However, this price remains the same for groups up to fifteen people. So why not bring along fourteen of you closest friend?. Indeed some of Nuuk’s other activities seem tailored for large groups. Just a heads up here.

Be sure to take in the town’s fabulous Northern Lights. They’re not 100% reliable though. However, seeing them at Nuuk is probably your best bet. You get fewer and fewer displays as you head farther and farther south. They’ll be no Northern Lights by the time you get to San Diego.

Take a trip to one of the oldest  permanent settlements in Greenland. You’ll meet a family living there. I don’t know their names.

And as always, “Have fun traveling.”

– 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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Khoresh Ghormeh Sabzi

Posted on February 2, 2021 by pauldelancey

Iranian Entree

KHORESH GHORMEH SABZI
(Herb Meat Stew)

INGREDIENTS

1 cup basmati rice or rice
1½ pounds stewing beef or lamb
1 large onion
2 tablespoons olive oil (2 more tablespoons later)
¼ cup fresh cilantro*
¼ cup fresh fenugreek leaves*
¼ cup fresh garlic chives or green onions or fresh chives*
4 green onions
½ cup fresh parsley*
½ tablespoon turmeric
1 15-ounce can kidney beans, drained
3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
2½ cups water

* = As a rule, you may substitute an amount of fresh herbs with ⅓ the amount of dried herbs.

Serves 5. Takes 2 hours.

PREPARATION

Cook rice according to instructions on package. While rice cooks, chop beef into 1″ cubes. Mince onion. Dice cilantro, fenugreek leaves, garlic chives, green onions, and parsley. Add onion and 2 tablespoons olive oil to large pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add beef cubes and turmeric. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until beef cubes brown on all sides.

Add cilantro, fenugreek leaves, garlic chives, green onions, parsley, and 2 tablespoons olive oil to small pan. Sauté at medium heat for 3 minutes or until herbs start to wilt. Stir frequently. Add sautéed veggies and herbs to large pan. Add kidney beans, lemon juice, pepper, salt, and water. (There should be enough water to cover ingredients by 1″.) Simmer on low heat for 1 hour or until meat is tender. Serve over rice.

TIDBITS

1) Eating khoresh ghormeh sabzi makes you smart. Hence, people who eat this entree are known as “ghormehful” or “gormful.” However, folks who don’t eat khoresh ghormeh sabzi have, of course no ghormeh inside themselves. They are known as “gormless.” Those who refuse to eat ghormeh are called “gormless fools,” particularly so in Britain where culinary intelligence is particularly valued.

– 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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Teriyaki Salmon

Posted on January 31, 2021 by pauldelancey

Japanese Entree

TERIYAKI SALMON

INGREDIENTS

½ cup mirin or (½ cup white wine and 3 tablespoons sugar)
¼ cup sake or dry white wine
⅔ cup soy sauce
2 teaspoons corn starch
2 teaspoons ginger
2 tablespoons brown sugar
¼ cup white sugar
4 6-ounce salmon fillets
1 green onion
½ tablespoon sesame seeds
no-stick spray

SPECIAL UTENSILS

large, resealable plastic bag
outdoor grill

Serves 4. Takes 3 hours 25 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add mirin, sake, soy sauce, corn starch, ginger, brown sugar, and white sugar to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. until sugar dissolves. Stir constantly. Remove and let cool to room temperature. Add marinade and salmon fillets to large, resealable plastic bag. Refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.

30 minutes before marinating is done, dice green onion. Add sesame seeds to pan. Toast sesame seeds at medium heat for 5 minutes or until they start to brown. Remove from heat. Add marinade to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes or until marinade thickens to a glaze. Stir frequently. Transfer to a bowl.

Spray grill with no-stick spray. Heat grill to low-medium. Brush salmon with glaze. Add salmon fillets to grill. Grill for 10 minutes for every 1″ of fillet thickness or until the thickest part starts to flake when tested with a fork. Turn once. Baste salmon with glaze every 2 minutes. Garnish with green onion and sesame seeds.

TIDBITS

1) Look at the above picture. The piece on the right looks like a triangle. So, in 570 B.C., when the geometry whiz, Pythagoras, was about to feast on a right-angled shaped piece of salmon teriyaki, inspiration naturally struck. “Whoa ho, the sum of the square of the two-sides equals the square of the hypotenuse.” None of this would have happened if he had been eating a hard-boiled egg.

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

Currywurst

Posted on January 31, 2021 by pauldelancey

German Entree

CURRYWURST

INGREDIENTS

1 large onion
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil (1 more tablespoon later)
1½ tablespoons curry powder
½ teaspoon chili powder
2 teaspoons paprika
½ teaspoon salt
1 pound tomato sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 pound bratwurst, knockwurst, or kielbasa
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Serves 3. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Mince onion. Add onion and 1½ tablespoons vegetable oil to pot. Sauté at medium-high heat or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add curry powder, chili powder, paprika, and salt. Reduce heat to medium and sauté for 1 minute. Stir frequently. Add tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Stir enough to prevent sauce from burning.

While sauce simmers, slice bratwurst into ½” slices. Add bratwurst and 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 10 minutes. Flip and stir bratwurst slices until they are all browned on both sides. Pour sauce over bratwurst slices and serve. Goes well with French fries.

TIDBITS

1) The city state of Ur was founded nearly 6,000 years when social media required flint chisels and stone. Archeologists–woo, spelled it right the first time, have found previous few examples of trolling in wall-platform comments’ sections, probably because they took several days to upload. Even then, the ripostes limited themselves to the likes of “Sez you.” and “So’s, your mother.”

2) So, Urs?, Urps?, Curs?,citizens of Ur generally expressed themselves in the culinary arts. German sausages were quite popular, thousands of years before the creation of the modern Germany. So far, culinary historians, always a fractious bunch, haven’t arrived at a consensus explaining this.

3) However, we know that Ramses II, pharaoh of Ancient Egypt–an inventor of the first condom, it still bears his name, loved Nile sausages. He hated the imports from Ur. “Ugh,” he said, “Those Curs, their sausage is the worst.” It was then only a hop, skip, and jump to the calling the foreign sausage, “Curry Wurst.” Currywurst, however, experienced a renaissance with the advent of refrigeration and air travel between Ur and Berlin. It’s now quite popular in the German capital.

– 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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Falafel (Tamiya) From Egypt

Posted on January 30, 2021 by pauldelancey

Egyptian Appetizer

FALAFEL
(Tamiya)

INGREDIENTS

2 cups dried fava beans* (aka broad beans)
1 small onion
8 green onions
2 garlic cloves
1¼ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt
2½ tablespoons fresh cilantro
3 tablespoons fresh parsley
4 cups vegetable oil (Enough to cover falafel patties)

* = Look in Middle Eastern supermarkets, supermarkets selling mostly organic food, or online. Also see if you can get these dried beans with the skins already removed. If you can only find canned fava beans, be sure to rinse them thoroughly before using.)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

food processor
large no-stick pan

Serves 6. Takes overnight for soaking plus 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add fava beans to large pot. Cover with water. Cover with lid and let soak overnight.

Rinse fava beans. Rub skins off beans. Add onion, green onion, garlic, baking powder, coriander, cumin, salt, fresh cilantro, and fresh parsley to food processor. Blend until everything is blended and minced. Add beans, Blend only until beans form a paste. (If the beans are blended more, your falafel might fall apart later.) Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Shape bean paste in 1″ balls. Flatten balls until they are ½” thick patties. Add oil, enough to cover patties, to large no-stick pan. Heat oil at high heat until bubbles form on the bottom. Carefully add falafel patties to pan. Don’t let them touch each other. (You will need to cook in batches.) Fry patties until golden brown. (This happens quickly.) Remove patties and drain on paper towels. Goes quite well with warm pita bread, hummus, and tomato salad.

TIDBITS

1) This dish is an appetizer. Culinary cryptographers will tell you that “appetizer” comes from an anagram for “Zap Peter I.”

2) And culinary linguists know that “zap” comes from the Russian “zapkya.” This word means to assassinate, kill, plot against, and otherwise dethrone and overthrow by means of feeding appetizers to the hated tsar.”

3) So, zap Peter I means to overthrow Peter I, perhaps even kill. Tsar Peter I was not completely enamored of this concept. Particularly so when the streltsky, Russian musketeers, engineered coups against him by serving appetizers to the palace guard. “Have some appetizers,” they said to the guards, “They’re quite tasty.” And they were. So much so that the entire guard ate and ate until they all had to take lengthy naps.

4) While the palace guard napped, the musketeers rounded up Peter’s supporters and imprisoned them. The streltsky would then enthrone in a figurehead, one who could be counted on the double the daily vodka ration.

5) Doubling the vodka ration made the musketeers drunk and pass out. Peter then reclaimed power while the streltsky lolled around in drunken stupors. Eventually, the musketeers sobered up and fed appetizers to the palace guards again.

6) And so it went, appetizers put the musketeers’ figurehead in power again. Drunken binges enabled Peter I to get back in control.

7) Then on April 1, 1698, Peter I experienced a brainstorm. Why not try giving the musketeers rivers of vodka AND appetizers? The idea worked. The besotted musketeers became so logy from eating platter after platter of appetizers, they slept themselves into oblivion.

8) Peter I, tsar of all the Russias, took advantage of the streltsky’s lasting inertia to tie them up. When they came to, they found themselves on a giant iceberg in the Arctic Ocean. The musketeers had enough food to last 30 days, along with hundreds of ping pong battles and ping pong balls. Tsar Peter had thoughtfully provided them also with enough pencils and entry forms to the First Winter Ping Pong Arctic Ocean Tournament.

9) Culinary historians doubt that the musketeers ever finished the tournament. The strong winter gales prevalent would have simply blown one ping pong ball after another into oblivion. At any rate, the marooned men would have found hitting remaining white ping pong balls quite difficult in the ever present white blizzards.

10) But the constant appetizer-fed revolts burned a lesson into Tsar Peter I’s brain. Never let any Russian eat appetizers. In 1699, he ordered the destruction of all the restaurants making appetizers.
No one would ever “Zap Peter I.”

11) But in 1917, Tsar Nicholas II foolishly permitted the making of appetizers. Lenin and Trotsky fed appetizers to the palace guard who fell asleep. The communists seized power. We are still living with the consequences of the Russian Revolution. Now you know why.

– 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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