international

Toad in the Hole

Posted on November 18, 2016 by pauldelancey

British Entree

TOAD IN THE HOLE

INGREDIENTStoadinthehole

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

SPECIAL UTENSIL

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

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 15 minutes.

PREPARATION

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

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

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

TIDBITS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Non (Tajikistani Flat Bread)

Posted on November 17, 2016 by pauldelancey

Tajikistani Appetizer

NON
(Flat Bread)

INGREDIENTSnon

2¼ cups flour (2 more tablespoons later)
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon sugar
2¼ teaspoons yeast
½ cup water
½ cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (1⅔ tablespoons more later)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons vegetable oil (½ teaspoon at a time)
½ teaspoon black onion seeds, aka nigella stiva
2 teaspoons minced shallot
Enough ice cubes to fill an 8″ casserole bowl or oven-safe pot

SPECIAL UTENSILS

cookie sheet
parchment paper
8″ casserole bowl or oven-safe pot

Makes 4 flat breads. Takes 3½-to-4 hours.

PREPARATION

Add 2¼ cups flour to large mixing bowl. Add salt, sugar, and yeast to separate spots on the sides of the flour. Use fist to make a well in the middle of the flour. Add water to well in flour. Knead all ingredients thoroughly for 5 minutes. Make a well in dough with fist. Add yogurt. Knead thoroughly for 5 minutes. Add a little bit of water, if necessary, to make a sticky dough.

Spread 2 tablespoons vegetable oil on flat surface. Add dough to flat surface. Knead for 10 minutes or until dough becomes smooth. Make dough into ball. Spread 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to sides of large mixing bowl. Put dough ball in mixing bowel. Cover with kitchen towel or plastic wrap. Let dough rise for 1½-to-2 hours or until it doubles in size.

Cover flat surface with parchment paper. Dust parchment paper with 2 tablespoons flour. Add dough to surface. Flatten dough with hands to knock excess air out. Form dough into ball again. Cover with kitchen towel or plastic wrap. Let sit for 30 minutes-to-1 hour or until dough doubles in size a second time.

While dough is doubling in size a second time, put cookie sheet on top rack in oven and heat to 500 degrees. (You really do want the cookie sheet to be hot when you place the dough circles on it.) Divide into 8 balls. Roll balls out until they are 6″ wide circles. Use a fork to make a 4″ circular depression in the middle of each dough circle. Add an equal amount of shallot to each depression. Brush an ½ teaspoon vegetable oil over each dough circle. Sprinkle onion seeds equally over each dough circle.

Remove cookie sheet from oven. Carefully slide dough covered parchment paper onto HOT cookie sheet. (For goodness sake, use oven mitts.) Place cook sheet on upper rack in oven. Add ice cubes to casserole bowl. Place casserole bowl on lower rack in oven. (This will gradually create steam.) Bake at 500 degrees for 7-to-15 minutes or until breads turn golden brown. Serve hot.

TIDBITS

1) “Non” is Tajikistani for “a type of flatbread.”

2) “Non” is also French for “no.”

3) “Non” is English for “not” as in “non-alcoholic beer.”

4) It is easy to see from these three tidbits alone that languages are different.

5) Miming is the same everywhere, though.

6) And hateful. How often have you suffered through a diner trying to mime his order of a cheeseburger, medium-well done, with a toasted sesame-seed bun, Romaine lettuce, not iceberg lettuce, deli-mustard, caramelized onions, and organic, non-GMO ketchup, all topped with a fried egg from an open-pasture egg? I know! All the time. It takes forever.

7) After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the leaders of America and Russia stopped miming when talking on the hot line. The nuances of the unseen mimed message proved just too much to pick up for the listener.

8) They still don’t mime even though we can now communicate visually. It’s just too slow. Suppose our president rings up their president to mime, “Oops. Sorry. My bad. Err, there’s no easy way to mime this, but we accidentally launched a nuclear missile at Moscow. Please deploy your anti-missile defenses right away. I’m most dreadfully embarrassed. And how’s the wife and kids?”

9) First of all, miming all that would take twenty-nine minutes, leaving the esteemed Russian ruler only one minute to deploy his defensive shield. If … he had only interpreted the mime correctly. Instead he will understand you to mean, “Sorry, my sperm impregnated your wife. She will be giving birth to aardvark sextuplets.”

10) The Russians will have no time to respond. Moscow will be destroyed. The Russian president will be miffed. A permanent state of coolness will exist between the two leaders, making future summit dinners remarkably uncomfortable, even when the shrimp scampi is excellent.

11) So when you parents tell you, “Why don’t you call me, already?” there’s a reason for it.

 

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Shrimp With Bell Peppers (Crevettes Aux Poivrons)

Posted on November 16, 2016 by pauldelancey

Togolese Entree

SHRIMP WITH BELL PEPPERS
(Crevettes aux Poivrons)

INGREDIENTSshrimpwithbellpeppers

2 garlic cloves
1½” ginger root
1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
1¼ pounds shrimp (26-to-30 count, peeled and deveined)
2 tablespoons olive oil

Serves 4. Takes 25 minutes.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

food processor

PREPARATION

Add garlic cloves, ginger root, and onion to food processor. Blend into paste. Seed green bell pepper, red bell pepper, and yellow bell pepper. Cut all three peppers into thin slices. Add olive oil and shrimp to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 1 minute. Flip shrimp over after 30 seconds. Stir frequently. Remove shrimp and place on plate. Keep oil in pan.

Add olive oil and garlic/ginger/onion paste to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 3 minutes. Stir frequently. Add bell-pepper slices. Sauté for at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until pepper slices soften. Stir frequently. Return shrimp to pan and sauté for 3 minutes or until shrimp turns orange on both sides. Stir frequently.

TIDBITS

1) The word “Togolese” comes from the words “to go” and “legalese.”

2) The World Supreme To Go Court presides in Lome, Togo. Why there? Because Africa is the least litigious continent in the world when it litigators go to to-go. And Togo is the least sue-happy country over there. Plus, Togo has great to-go food. Why resolve international to-go lawsuits anywhere else?

3) You can get all sorts of Togolese to-go food from the land’s fine restaurants. However, if you do go to Togo, do go to their excellent shrimp-with-bell-peppers carts. Remember to say “please” and “thank you” or the vendors will biff your nose. But don’t sue them, they know their culinary law.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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Shrimp in Garlic Butter

Posted on November 14, 2016 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

SHRIMP IN GARLIC BUTTER

INGREDIENTSshrimpingarlicbutter

4 garlic cloves
6 tablespoons butter
¼ cup lime juice
1½ pounds jumbo shrimp peeled, deveined
4 small flour tortillas
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro (optional)

Serves 4. Takes 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic. Add butter to pan. Melt using low heat. Add garlic. Sauté on medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir frequently. Stop if garlic starts to brown. Add lime juice and shrimp. Sauté at medium heat for 3 minutes on each side or until shrimp turns pinkish-orange. Stir frequently. Warm tortillas in microwave or in pan on stove. Put shrimp in a serving bowl and tortillas on a serving plate. Let guests add shrimp to tortillas and garnish with cilantro as they wish.

TIDBITS

1) The ascent of life One-billion years ago: Viruses appear.

2) 900 million years ago (MYA): Taco trucks arrive. They serve wonderful food.

3) 800 MYA: Taco trucks disappear. Viruses, while great fans of all Mexican food, simply cannot eat much. It takes trillions and trillions of viruses to eat one taco. And viruses simply cannot carry enough cash with them. And they’re sightless and cannot even find a taco truck even if one were to bite them on the nose. Which viruses don’t have. One wonders how taco truck owners managed to find the financial backing to last through 100 millions years of disappointing sales.

4) 63 MYA + 1: Taco trucks reappear. The food is, as always, fantastic. Carnivorous dinosaurs love them. Taco vendors work out a barter agreement with them.

5) 63 MYA: Taco trucks disappear along with the dinosaurs and most of life on Earth. Giant meteors slamming into Earth, always a bad thing.

6) 1788: Taco trucks reappear in Paris, France. King Louis XVI loves their food.

7) 1793: Louis XVI is beheaded. Taco trucks disappear. The French Revolution has many excesses.

8) 1880s: Taco trucks arrive in San Antonio, Texas. We are living in a golden age.

 

 

– 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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Qurotob (Bread salad from Tajikistan)

Posted on October 30, 2016 by pauldelancey

Tajik Entree

QUROTOB
(Bread Salad)

INGREDIENTS – SALADquorotub

2 pita loaves
1½ tablespoons olive oil (1½ more tablespoons later)
1 onion
2 green onions
1½ tablespoons olive oil
2 cups Greek yogurt
½ cup hot water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon dill
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
½ cucumber
4 tomatoes
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon fresh parsley
8 non breads (See above recipe) or other flatbreads such as fatir or pita

SPECIAL UTENSILS

cookie sheet
large serving plate

Serves 8. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, Brush pita loaves with 1½ tablespoons olive oil. Break loaves into small bits. Place pita bits on cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-to-20 minutes or until pita bits turn golden brown. (The time varies with the thickness of the pita loaves.)

While pita bits bake, dice onion and green onions. Add 1½ tablespoons olive oil, onion, and green onion to pan. Sauté at medium high heat for 5 minutes or until onion and green onion soften. Add Greek yogurt, hot water, lemon juice, coriander, dill, salt, and sugar to large mixing bowl. Whisk until well blended. Seed cucumber. Dice cucumber, tomatoes, cilantro, and parsley.

Add toasted pita bits to large serving plate. Pour yogurt mixture over pita bits. Top with sautéd onion and green onion, cucumber, and tomato. Garnish with cilantro and parsley. Guests use their non bread to scoop up the yogurty, veggie, bread salad from the communal serving plate. Alternatively, spread all the fixing over a non bread and use a knife and fork.

TIDBITS

1) How did this wonderful entree come about? Here is the time line.

2) 4,500 million years ago (mya): First single-celled organisms come into existence. So does the first spam e-mail involving Nigerian dictators and their money.

3) 4,000 mya: A woman named Sally shows up at the DMV without an appointment.

4) 3,500 mya: Earliest oxygen molecule. It’s name was Bob. There were no last names that long ago.

5) 2,500 mya: Oxygen crisis. Oxygen has mid-life jitters.

6) 1,200 mya: Earliest sexual reproduction. Single-cell dating sites occur. First pickup lines invented.

7) 800 mya: Multi-cellular organisms hit the world scene. Sally’s still in line.

8) 440 mya: 86% of all species are exterminated. First known appearance of DaleksTM.

9) 350 mya: Sharks with rows of nasty, pointy teeth show up. Dun-dun, dun-dun.

10) 275 mya: Theraspid synaspids branch off from pelycosaur synapsids; no idea what this means.

11) 225 mya: The world’s first dinosaurs come from out of nowhere. They aren’t met with thunderous applause;. no life forms have hands.

12) 220 mya: Gymosperm forests dominate land life. This is not as dirty as it sounds.

13) 219 mya: It takes life 1 millions years to spot the first typo. The correct spelling is gymnosperm.

14) 160 mya: Mammals show up. Life is great until …

15) 155 mya: Mosquitoes do also.

16) 65 mya: Dinosaurs get wiped out by gigantic meteor. Mammals begin their ascent to global supremacy. Did mammals engineer this event? Who knows? They leave no written record.

17) 63 mya: Creodonts, not to be confused with orthodontists, spontaneously appear.

18) 52 mya: First bats show up.

19) 51 mya: First balls appear.

20) 50 mya: Baseball becomes popular when organisms finally agree on rules.

21) 250 thousand years ago: Humans pop up in Eastern Africa.

22) 300 years ago. Human chefs create qurotob, bread salad. Sally gets her license. Life is good.

– 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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Jasha Maroo (Diced Chicken)

Posted on October 18, 2016 by pauldelancey

Bhutanese Entree

JASHA MAROO
(Diced Chicken)

INGREDIENTSjashamaroo

1 cup Bhutanese red rice or regular rice
½ pound chicken breasts
½ pound chicken thighs
3 garlic cloves
1 green chile
1 small onion
2 shallots
1 medium tomato
1″ ginger root or 1 tablespoon fresh ginger
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ teaspoon pink Himalayan salt or regular salt
1 cup chicken stock

Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cook rice according to instructions on bag. While rice cooks, cut chicken breasts and chicken thighs into ½” cubes. Dice garlic, green chile, onion, shallots, and tomato. Grate or mince ginger root.

Add vegetable oil, green chile, ginger, onion, and shallots to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add chicken cubes and tomato. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until chicken turns white on the outside. Stir frequently Add salt and chicken stock. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Boil for 10 minutes or until liquid is mostly gone. Stir occasionally. Serve hot alongside rice.

TIDBITS

1) “Jasha Maroo” is an anagram for “AJ has a room.”

2) Well, that’s one less worry for us all. Good for you, AJ.

3) Though why someone thought it necessary to put that in code is beyond me.

4) Perhaps AJ has been hired by some evil foreign power to foment revolution in Bhutan and “AJ has a room is secret message saying he is ready to incite violence against the country’s government.

5) Dang AJ, you seemed so nice and forlorn. So I found you a hotel in Bhutan. Geez, AJ, never again.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Kulu’wa (Beef tomato stew)

Posted on October 14, 2016 by pauldelancey

Eritrean Entree

KULU’WA
(Beef tomato stew)

INGREDIENTSkuluwa

1 pound lamb or beef stew meat
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
3 tomatoes
2½ tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon berbere spice
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt

Serves 4. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut meat into ½” cubes. Dice garlic, onion, and tomatoes. Add butter, garlic, and onion to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add tomato, berbere spice, pepper, and salt. Stir until well blended. Add meat cubes. Sauté at medium-high for 15 minutes or until meat is tender. Goes well with injera, Eritrean or Ethiopian flatbread.

TIDBITS

1) When objects recede from you at a very fast rate, say 43.7 miles per second, they will look redder than they really are. Astronomers call this display a “red shift.”

2) The entire universe is expanding. This is why some marriages fail. The partners are literally getting farther apart from each other every second. And that brown freckle? The expanding universe makes it looks redder as well. The freckle now looks like a hickey to your already suspicious spouse. Harsh words get said, words that can’t be taken back and soon you’re on your way to divorce court when a cop pulls you over for going 43.7 miles per second, which is way more than you thought your Honda FitTM could do even with high-octane gas. You try to tell the lawman that your speed comes from the expanding universe. He shakes his head. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

3) This is also why many people haven’t eaten this recipe’s red entree. Kulu’wa. The redness means it is moving away from you at 43.7 miles per second. You really have to be a speedy eater to get even one delicious spoonful in your mouth. Why, in just one minute your kulu’wa has made across the country. Most of my red soups end up at my brother’s kitchen table. He says, “Thank you.”

4) One of my tomato soups ended up at Cape Canaveral. NASA quickly bolted it down and is currently investigating its possibilities in powering intergalactic space travel.

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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Bajan Baked Chicken From Barbados

Posted on October 5, 2016 by pauldelancey

Barbadian Entree

BAJAN BAKED CHICKEN

INGREDIENTSbajanbakedchicken

½ teaspoon allspice
2 tablespoons softened butter
3 garlic cloves
½ teaspoon ground cloves
4 stalks green onions
¼ cup lime juice
½ teaspoon marjoram
1 large onion
½ teaspoon parsley
2 tablespoons peanut oil
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 red bell pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
1 Scotch bonnet or jalapeno pepper
1 teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 pounds boneless chicken breasts or thighs

SPECIAL UTENSILS

9″ x 13″ casserole dish
blender or food processor

Serves 4. Takes 5 hours.

PREPARATION

Add all ingredients to blender except chicken and cilantro. Blend on medium speed or until ingredients form a paste. Place paste and chicken pieces in large mixing bowl. Turn chicken pieces around until they are thoroughly coated with paste. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 4 hours. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake for 20-to-40 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink inside. Baste every 20 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) Even roosters like my recipes. To impress hot hens, they dance around, repeatedly drop and pick up tidbits of food, and make food calls. This ritual is called “tidbitting” after the Tidbit section of my recipes. Wow, I’m honored.

2) Sultry biddies prefer males who tidbit often. They also go squooshy for roosters with brighter, large combs atop their heads. Size matters, even in the poultry world.

– 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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Bunny Chow

Posted on September 30, 2016 by pauldelancey

South African Entree

BUNNY CHOW

INGREDIENTSbunnychow

1 medium onion
3 medium potatoes
4 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tomatoes
2 pounds chicken breasts or lamb
3 fresh curry leaves
3 tablespoons Durban masala (See recipe)
⅓ cup chicken stock
2 1-lb whole white loaves
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Dice onion. Peel potatoes. Cut potatoes into 1″ cubes. Add onion, potato, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, fennel seeds, and vegetable oil to Dutch oven. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir constantly. Remove from heat.

Dice tomatoes. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Add Durban masala, Add tomato, chicken, curry leaves, and Durban masala to Dutch oven. Cook using medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir frequently. Add chicken stock. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes or until potato is tender and chicken is no longer pink inside. Remove Dutch oven from heat. Discard cinnamon stick.

Slice bread loaf in half along its length. Use sharp knife to cut off most of the soft white bread from each half. Leave ½”-to-1″ of bread crust along the edges and bottoms. (The scooped out bread can be made into bread crumbs.) Ladle potato/tomato/chicken mixture into each hollowed-out loaf half. Garnish with coriander. Repeat for second bread loaf.

TIDBITS

1) Bunnies are naturally fierce fighters. Armies everywhere had them. Napoleon wouldn’t have dreamed of conquering Europe without his corps of bunny irregulars.

2) But you say, “Aha, Napoleon didn’t conquer Europe. See, you’re wrong. Bunnies aren’t so fierce.” Ho, ho, they are. Napoleon won victory after victory up until 1808 with his beserker bunnies.

3) Then, Napoleon invaded Spain. Spain had guerrilla fighters. More importantly, it had battle hardened bunnies. Conquistador bunnies. Bunnies that pushed Moors out of the Iberian positions during the centuries of La Reconquista. Bunnies that had accompanied Cortes to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru, and Albondigas to Greenland. Bunnies that terrified conquered peoples into quiet submission for centuries.

4) The French army never had been on the receiving end of a bunny charge. Never had seen those twitching noses and the unreasoning terror that engendered. Never had to see a sea of bunny tails popping up and down as they stamped toward them . . .

5) where they nibbled your shoes and your shoelaces and so you tripped and your comrades laughed and laughed at you and felt so ashamed that you deserted the army and ran home where you sold sprigs of cilantro which tastes like soap to some people which was okay because all life tasted like soap to you and you spent the rest of your life thinking in run-on sentences.

6) And even if you managed to man up and stand your ground after all that, the bunnies would bite your ankles repeatedly which often hurt, particularly so when their teeth actually broke your skin.

7) Suppose you were a stalwart sort, a man among and you were still fighting bunnies crazed beyond belief by sangria, you’d still have to deal with the bunnies’ powerful rear legs, legs that could kick a potato twenty feet.

8) Imagine. You’ve seen their twitching noses, their bobbing cottontails, had your shoelaces nibbled in two, had your ankles bitten, and now they’re hurting your shins and they won’t stop. And then, and then, they keep your potatoes twenty feet away where they get smooshed in the heat of battle.

9) You have no food. So, you confiscate some local food, some paella perhaps, but your body hasn’t faced Spanish food bacteria. So, now you’re a French soldier in Spain fighting for an emperor who only cares about himself and you have the mother of all stomach aches. You throw thrown your musket and flee.

10) The rest of your comrades see that you, a man among men, are fleeing. They realize the fight is lost. They flee as well. Your army is routed. Bunny-fear demoralizes the other French armies. French forces reel back to France. Allied hordes attack Paris and storm the Montmarte. France capitulates. Your flight from the Spanish battlefield brought all this about.

11) The French Emperor Napoleon gets exiled to Elba. The long-time leader gives a farewell to his Old Guard, “Adieu mes amis, nous sommes battus vaillamment et aurions gagné mais pour ce lecteur de recette et sa peur des lapins.”*

* = “Good buy my friends, we fought valiantly and would have won but for this read reader of recipes and his fear of bunnies. (Sorry, apparently Napoleon’s French is only as good as mine. Weird.)

12) So you’ve changed history. Awesome responsibility, isn’t it?

– 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Durban Masala

Posted on September 25, 2016 by pauldelancey

South African Appetizer

DURBAN MASALA

durbanmasalaINGREDIENTS

½ teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1¼ teaspoons coriander
1¼ teaspoons cumin
¼ teaspoon fenugreek
¾ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon mace
⅛ teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons turmeric

Makes ¼ cup. Takes 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add all ingredients to mixing. Mix with whisk until well blended.

TIDBITS

1) Durban is a city in South Africa. Durban rhymes with Durban. This is useful when constructing rhyming poems. In much the same way, gnome rhymes with Nome, a city in Alaska. Over 20,000 gnomes live in Nome, admired for their strong work ethic. They’ll guard your garden for amazing lengths of time and everyone knows much polar bears fear gnomes.

4) Gnomes first came to Massachusetts on the Mayflower, fleeing persecution from waffle eaters. Later, they worked their way south, guarding spice gardens along the way. The little guys eventually settled in Chancellorsville, Virginia–Why not?–to lead a safe, if not totally accepted existence.

5) Tragedy struck in 1863. General Stonewall Jackson was shot after the battle of Chancellorsville. Enraged townsfolk held a gnome fired the fatal shot and drove the wee ones out of town.

6) The gnomes drifted ever northwestward, until they reached Nome on the Bering Sea. They could drift no longer. They wore parkas to keep warm. The parkas covered their faces, just like the natives. You couldn’t tell the gnomes and the people apart. Sure, gnomes are much shorter than people, but you always keep your face to the ground during a blizzard. And 19th-century Nome always had blizzards. The townsfolk didn’t even notice the little folk until 1941, when World War II broke out. People. after kneeling, worked shoulder to shoulder with the gnomes to defeat the common foe. The gnomes gained acceptance into one career after another. Today, Nome’s the gnome genome sequencing capital of the world.

– 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, humor, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

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