international

Xin Xim (chicken and shrimp stew)

Posted on September 17, 2016 by pauldelancey

Brazilian Entree

XIN XIM
(chicken and shrimp stew)

INGREDIENTS

3 garlic cloves
⅓ cup lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil (2 more tablespoons later)
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1½ pounds boneless chicken breasts
1½ pounds boneless chicken thighs
1 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon palm oil (aka dende), annatto oil, or olive oil (2½ tablespoons more later)
1 large onion
1 green bell pepper
3 plum tomatoes
1½ cups chicken stock
1 ounce dried shrimp or ground dried shrimp
1½ ounces gingerroot
¾ cup cashews
⅓ cup peanuts, roasted and unsalted
2½ tablespoons palm oil (aka dende), annatto oil, or olive oil
1¼ cups coconut milk
⅓ cup fresh cilantro
2 fresh malagueta peppers (These are really hot. Serrano and jalapeno peppers are milder and easier to find)

SPECIAL UTENSIL

food processor
Dutch oven
sonic obliterator

Makes 6 bowls. Takes 2 hours.

PREPARATION

Add garlic cloves to food processor. Blend until you get garlic paste. Add garlic paste, lime juice, 2 tablespoons olive oil, pepper, salt, chicken breasts, chicken thighs, and shrimp to large mixing bowl. Turn the chicken and the shrimp until they are well coated. Cover and marinate for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

Remove chicken pieces from marinade and pat dry with paper towel. (Keep marinade.) Add chicken pieces and 2 tablespoons olive oil to pan Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes on each side (10 minutes total) or until chicken turns golden brown. Remove and set aside.

Remove shrimp from marinade. Add shrimp and 1 tablespoon palm oil to Dutch oven. Sauté shrimp using high heat for 2 minutes or until shrimp starts to turn pink. Stir frequently. Remove shrimp with its marinade and set aside.

Mince onion. Seed and dice green bell pepper and plum tomatoes. Add onion and bell pepper to Dutch oven. Sauté for 5 minutes using medium-high heat or until onion softens. Add tomato, chicken pieces, and chicken stock. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer stew for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally.

While stew simmers, add dried shrimp, gingerroot, cashews, and peanuts to food processor. Grind using low setting until you get little bits. Stop before they become paste. Add bits to Dutch oven. Stir until bits blend into the chicken stock. Simmer stew for 5 minutes on low heat.

While stews simmers, dice cilantro. (If at this time guests ask when will the meal be ready, zap them with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need that negativity in your kitchen.) Add cilantro, marinated shrimp, 2½ tablespoons palm oil, coconut milk, and malagueta peppers. Simmer on low heat for 5 minutes and shrimp are pink and the chicken is tender. Serve with golden farofa (a Brazilian dish made from cassava flour) or rice.

TIDBITS

1) Xin xim is an anagram for Xi minx. My 1941 dictionary says a minx is a hussy or a wanton. Xi is something inconsequential and boring. Qi is a word that no one ever speaks because no one knows what it means. It’s worth a lot in ScrabbleTM, though.

2) However, the anagram for “Chicken and Shrimp Stew” is “Mr. Ken’s pecan witch dish.” Mr. Ken Appleby was an Englishman working in Madrid in 1587 for the Spanish Inquisition. He never learned Spanish. Didn’t make interrogating his prisoners difficult?

3) Yes, it did. While his fellow Spanish-speaking inquisitors we’re putting prisoners on racks and extorting confessions with assembly-line efficiency, Ken lagged behind something considerable. Because he couldn’t understand the anguished admissions of his heretics, he had to resort to charades to communicate.

4) Except a person tied down and stretched out to pro-basketball lengths made a poor charade partner. So, Ken never tied down his prisoners. He fed them his pecan pie. Ken’s pies were delicious. People would confess to anything to eat one and they did. His pies were to die for and they did. Especially witches, who as everyone knows, break out in hives when they eat pecans. Ken was able to find one witch after another. He began a rapid ascent up the inquisitor ladder.

5) Then Spain and England went to war in 1588. A death warrant was put out for Ken. His happy days over, Ken fled to Brazil. However, his fame as with pecan pies preceded him. His life was still in danger. Fortunately an anagramist said his dish was anagram for chicken and shrimp stew. The Brazilians called his new culinary creation, xin xim, because they have words for everything. 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, history, international | Tags: anagram, Brazilian, Chef Paul, chicken, cookbook, dende, England, Englishman, entree, gingerroot, HumorOutcasts, hunks, hussy, Ken, Lutheran, Madrid, malagueta, marinade, minx, mushrooms, palm oil, pecan, pies, prisoners, qi, recipes, Scrabble, serrano, shrimp, Spain, Spanish, Spanish Inquisition, stew, wanton, witch, xi, xin xim | 2 Comments

Air Koryo Hamburger (World’s Worst Hamburger)

Posted on August 29, 2016 by pauldelancey

North Korean Entree

AIR KORYO-TM HAMBURGER
(World’s worst burger)

INGREDIENTS

1 pound ground whitish mystery meat that’s been lurking in the fridge for months OR mixed ground pork and turkey
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
4 teaspoons yellow mustard
4 leaves wilted lettuce
4 thin bits wilted onion
4 thick yellow buns

Makes 4 burgers. Takes 15 minutes and 30-to-60 minutes to cool down completely.

PREPARATION

Add ground mystery meat, salt, and sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands. Make four patties. Add patties to pan. Cook patties on low-to-medium heat for 2-to-4 minutes on each side or until no pink remains and the outside is still white. Do not brown in any way.

Remove patties from pan. While patties lose all warmth, 30 minutes should do it, spread mustard on each bun half. Do not under any circumstance toast or heat buns. Add onion slice, or fragment, to each bun bottom. Add patty to each bun top. Then put wilted lettuce leaf* on top on each patty. Ideally, the lettuce leaf should totally obscure the meat patty. Assemble burger.

To make it tasty, cook as above except: use beef, half the amount of salt, omit the sugar, use fresh lettuce and onion, use ketchup, and toast buns. Serve hot.

* = Don’t worry if you find only fresh lettuce at your supermarket. Simply put lettuce on patty while it’s being fried on its second side. Let lettuce cool down along with patty. Voilà, wilted lettuce.

TIDBITS

1) Air Koryo has been rated the world’s worst airline in the world for the last five years. Amazingly, there are people who are so eager to fly it that destinations don’t even matter. Flying Air Koryo is like stepping into a time warp. The airline uses propeller planes that haven’t seen service anywhere else for decades. Particularly valued seats are next to the noisy engines or where the plane shakes the most. Some people return year after year to fly Air Koryo’s unique aircraft. Enthusiasts, you bet.

2) Air Koryo’s “burger” comes with a paper bag having the ominous words, “For your refuses.”

3) North Korea clearly is a threat to the world. Almost as much as lutefisk vendors.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: Air Koryo, burger, Chef Paul, cookbook, entree, hamburger, hunks, lutefisk, Lutheran, mushrooms, mystery meat, North Korea, North Korean, propeller planes, recipes, supermarket, time warp, worst burger, worst hamburger | 2 Comments

Codfish Cakes

Posted on August 17, 2016 by pauldelancey

British Entree

CODFISH CAKES

INGREDIENTS

1 pound cod fillets
2 large potatoes
½ teaspoon salt
1½ tablespoons butter
1 small egg
1½ tablespoons minced onion
1 teaspoon parsley
⅛ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon tarragon
1 large egg
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ cup breadcrumbs

Makes 6 codfish cakes. Takes 2¼ hours, more if you spill the bowl with beaten egg on yourself and you need to change clothes and beat another egg.

PREPARATION

Cut cod into 1″ squares. Peel potatoes and cut them into fourths. Add potato and salt to large pot. Add enough water to cover. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes or until potato fourths are almost tender. Drain water. Mash potato fourths with potato masher or fork. Remove from heat.

Add cod to pan and cover with water. Simmer on low heat for 5-to-10 minutes or until cod becomes soft and begins to flake. Stir frequently. Drain water.

While cod simmers, beat small egg. Add cod, potato, butter, beaten small egg, onion, parsley, pepper, and tarragon to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended. Form mixture into 6 round, flat cakes.

Add large egg to second mixing bowl. Beat with whisk. Add breadcrumbs to plate. Dredge codfish cakes through breadcrumbs until completely coated. Dip coated codfish cakes into beaten egg. Refrigerate codfish cakes for 45 minutes or until they are firm.

Add oil to pan. Heat on medium-high heat until a little breadcrumb starts to dance in the oil. Add as many codfish cakes as possible to pan. (You might need to cook the cakes in batches.) Sauté cakes for 3-to-5 minutes on each side or until golden brown. (The time needed to cook the codfish cakes tends to go down with successive batch.) Serve via catapult or, more traditionally, on a plate. Goes well with tartar sauce.
TIDBITS

1) The codpiece was a bag, or piece of clothing, that was sown into men’s pants. Men kept their lunch in it. Most of the time, the lunch was the ever popular cod. Hence, the codpiece.

2) Pause and reflect how amazing that tidbit 1) is true. I thought I had made something up but no, it’s all factual.

3) Renaissance women, having noses, objected to the foul smell emanating from their husbands’ fish-laden groins. It got so bad, that women went on a sex strike in 1454. This was a great opportunity for the porn industry to start. However, the lack of hand-held cameras, the internet with its downloading capabilities, and DVD daunted even the most entrepid entrepreneurs.

4) The DVD-deprived House of York favored giving into their spouses’s demands. The House of Not York favored keeping their fish lunch near their manhood. Tempers rose. Thing were said and soon civil war broke out between the two houses. From 1455 to 1485. Biff! Biff!

6) Thank goodness, that bloody civil war is over. The House of Not York won. Men everywhere cheered.

8) Not so, with their wives. Fishy groins still stank. Intimacy between spouses remained intermittent.

9) However, the husbands still wanted their bed dancing. This need proved to be an opening for enterprising prostitutes. And so, prostitution became a thriving industry along with chocolate chip cookies. Such cookies placed on the bordellos’s window sills lured customers in again and again. Kinda like S&H Green StampsTM during the 1950s and 1960s or even like frequent-flier miles now.

11) How did these horizontal entrepreneurs stand the codfish stench of their customers? By smoking tobacco. Smoking deadens the sense of smell.

12) The wives soon found out this secret and took up smoking as well. Men came back to their wives. Relations were resumed. Babies were born. The population soared. The supply of jobs didn’t. Men became restless and rioted. Monarchs fear revolutions. Monarchs feared losing their heads.

13) Kings everywhere enrolled angry, aimless youth into their military. Armies expanded. So, did the opportunities for conflict. Soon, vast armies of armed, cod-stuffing youths fought each other all over Europeans for centuries.

14) Refrigeration came to America in 1911. American men no longer needed to keep cod in their shorts. Men and women no longer need to deaden their noses with cigarettes. People could smell flowers again. Gardening became America’s national pastime. All was well in the USA.

15) Tragically, refrigeration did not come to Europe until 1915, too late to stop World War I. Nasally impaired leaders all over the continents sent an entire generation to its doom. If only they had been able to stop and smell the roses.

16) Thanks to refrigeration and the calming ability to smell roses there has not another major conflict to speak off aside from the Unpleasantness of 1939-1945 and a few other spats. Yay.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: America, American, bordellos, British, cakes, Chef Paul, cigarettes, cod, codfish, codpiece, cookbook, Europeans, frequent flier miles, groins, House of York, hunks, Lutheran, military, potatoes, prostitutes, prostitution, recipes, refrigeration, revolutions, tarragon, War of the Roses, wives, World War I | 7 Comments

Shrimp Ceviche

Posted on August 4, 2016 by pauldelancey

Ecuadorian Appetizer

SHRIMP CEVICHE

INGREDIENTS

8 limes or ¼ cup fresh lime juice
3 oranges or 1 cup fresh orange juice
1 large red onion
3 tomatoes
2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
¼ cup fresh cilantro
⅓ cup ketchup
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Squeeze limes and oranges to get juices. Cut red onion into long, thin strips. Dice cilantro and tomato. Add enough water to cover shrimp to pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Add shrimp to pot. Boil until shrimp turns slightly pink, about 2-to-3 minutes. Do not overcook, letting it turn completely red, as it will make the shrimp mushy. Remove shrimp with slotted spoon and let cool. Add lime juice, orange juice, red onion, cilantro, tomato, ketchup, pepper, salt, and vegetable oil to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add shrimp once it has cooled. Mix with hands until shrimp is well coated. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.

TIDBITS

1) Shrimp ceviche is reddish-pink and tasty. Many Vikings had reddish hair and loved good tasting food. However, Vikings ate oatmeal all the time, bowl after bowl. This drove the Norsemen crazy. They started cheating at checkers and saying, “Sez you” to everyone they met.

3) The Viking women took to cooking lutefisk. the foulest smelling, most evil dish ever rather than cook another yet bowl of oatmeal. Some wives had even thrown themselves into fjords instead of doing that. Fortunately, lutefisk’s horrible smell drove the menfolk to raid foreign lands for tasty food and even gold, sometimes. The women stayed at home and played Runeble, basically ScrabbleTM with runes, and ordered Chinese takeaway.

4) In 1284, Bjorni Thorvald, discovered Ecuador, while looking for a Pokemon GoTM character. This news electrified all Scandinavia. Whole clans of blood-thirsty Vikings moved to Ecuador. This is why there are so many blue-eyed redheads there.

5) Thus, the Viking raids stopped. Relieved Europeans came out of hiding to build the Renaissance.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, food, international | Tags: appetizer, ceviche, Chef Paul, Chinese, cookbook, Ecuador, Ecuadorian, Europeans, hunks, lutefisk, Lutheran, mushrooms, Norsemen, oatmeal, Pokemon, Pokemon Go, recipes, Renaissance, Scandinavia, Scrabble, shrimp, takeaway, Viking, women | Leave a comment

Camarones Enchilados

Posted on July 28, 2016 by pauldelancey

Cuban Entree

CAMARONES ENCHILADOS

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
3 tablespoons lime juice
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup fresh cilantro
4 garlic cloves
1 large onion
¼ cup fresh parsley
1 cubanelle, Anaheim pepper or yellow bell pepper
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon TabascoTM sauce
¾ cup tomato sauce
½ cup white wine

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add shrimp, lime juice, pepper, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix together with hand or fork until shrimp is thoroughly coated. Cover and marinate in refrigerator for 1 hour. While shrimp marinates, mince cilantro, garlic cloves, onion and , parsley. Seed and dice cubanelle. Remove shrimp and keep marinade from mixing bowl.

Add olive oil, cubanelle, garlic, and onion to frying pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add cilantro, parsley, marinade, bay leaf, Tabasco sauce, tomato sauce, and white wine. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add shrimp and simmer for 5 or until shrimp turns pink or orange and is no longer translucent. Remove bay leaf. Goes well with rice.

TIDBITS

1) Nes Enchila sold shrimp on a stick from the back of his Chevy Camaro in the Little Miami section of Havana during the 1950s. His food was so good that the Spanish speaking people, of which there were many in Havana, would ask for two or “dos.”

2) In 1959, hungry Cuban revolutionaries hailed Nes as he drove by. Nes remembered how Dictator Bautista had just stiffed him on a big catering order and fed them all. Their energy restored, Castro and his men ousted Bautista in two days. Later, Castro invited the Russians over for Nes’s shrimp. They brought missiles with them and the world almost had a nuclear war. Nes’s food was that good.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: Anaheim, Bautista, camarones, Castro, Chef Paul, cookbook, Cuba, Cuban, cubanelle, enchilados, entree, Havana, Miami, nuclear war, recipes, revolution, Russians, shrimp, Tabasco | Leave a comment

Danish Millionbøf

Posted on July 23, 2016 by pauldelancey

Danish Entree

MILLIONBØF

INGREDIENTS

1 pound potatoes
1 large onion
2 teaspoons butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pound ground beef (85% lean is best)
2 tablespoons flour
1¾ cups beef stock
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons gravy browning or dark gravy

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes. Cut potatoes into fourths. Put potato fourths in large pot. Boil on high heat for 20 minutes.

While potatoes are boiling, dice onion. Add onion, butter, and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until it starts to brown or BEGINS TO SOFTEN. Stir frequently. Add ground beef. Reduce heat to medium. Cook for 3-to-5 minutes or until beef starts to brown. Stir occasionally.

After potatoes have been boiled for 20 minutes, remove them from pot. Put potatoes in large mixing bowl. Mash them. Add flour to pan with ground beef. Stir until well blended. Add beef stock, pepper, and salt.. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 20 minutes or until less than half of the liquid is left. Stir occasionally. Add gravy browning. Stir until well blended. Serve over mashed potatoes.

TIDBITS

1) Bøf is Danish for beef. Bøf is also a palindrome for føb. Føb isn’t Danish for anything, although the Danes do have a word for everything that exists. Føb is just a reserve word the Danes have just in case something really new is discovered, such as a carnivorous, ambulatory fig looking tree on Mars. (CAMFLTOM)

2) The Danish Official Word Naming Association (DOWNA) would then look down their list of approved new words. If føb were at the top of the list, then the CAMFTOM would be called “føb.”

3) There’s more. Take the first letter away from føb and you get øf, the Danish word for oink. Now you know both of Denmark’s really necessary words. Remember the song, “If I could talk to the Danes?” Well, now you can. Go visit Denmark. Visit today, before you lose your vocabulary.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: beef, Chef Paul, cookbook, Danes, Danish, Denmark, entree, gravy, gravy browning, hunks, Lutheran, Mars, millinbøf, mushrooms, oink, recipes, vocabulary | Leave a comment

Simple Jordanian Hummus

Posted on May 6, 2016 by pauldelancey

Jordanian Appetizer

SIMPLE HUMMUS

INGREDIENTS

2 cans chick peas (keep liquid)
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup olive oil
¾ cup tahini
¼ teaspoon cumin
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

Makes 5 cups. Takes 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add all ingredients to blender. Blend on medium setting until smooth. If your hummus is watery, add tahini. If it is too thick, add water and olive oil. This is a forgiving recipe. You can add more of each ingredient until the hummus is the way you like it. Hummus goes well with pita bread.

TIDBITS

1) It’s more authentic to smash up the chick peas with a mortar and pestle. If guests complain about you using a blender, point to the title of this dish, “Simple Hummus.” Suppose your guests also say, “You shouldn’t use canned chick peas. You need to boil dried chick peas.” Warn them. Right away. “I am the cook. You are in my kitchen.” This proclamation invokes culinary law which is superior to civil law. (See Courgette v Rhode Island.) This decision empowers you to mete out any punishment necessary to restore order in all rooms in the house dealing with food.)

2) Your death defying quests might continue with, “Why didn’t you make your own tahini?” You know have three choices.

3) One. Back down. Please don’t this. The prestige of the entire culinary community world will suffer irreparable damage. Customers will charge into a restaurant’s kitchen armed with the steak knives found on their table every time their rib eyes aren’t done to their liking.

4) Two. Force them out of your house with an electric cattle prod. This is a safe, respectable, middle-ground response.

5) Three. Zap the clods into oblivion with your sonic obliterator, an essential item in any serious kitchen. A strong response to be sure, but these unruly guests will never again bother any chef. Yay.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: apocalyptic thriller, appetizer, Chef Paul, chick peas, cookbook, culinary, hummus, hunks, Jordan, Jordanian, law, Luthernan, Paul De Lancey, pita, recipes, Rhode Island, tahini | Leave a comment

South African Bobotie

Posted on May 4, 2016 by pauldelancey

South African Entree

BOBOTIE

INGREDIENTS

2 slices bread
⅔ cup milk (½ cup more later)
1 Granny Smith or other sour apple
1 large onion
3 tablespoons butter
2 pounds ground beef
2¼ tablespoons lemon juice
1½ tablespoons curry powder
½ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
¾ teaspoon turmeric
2 cups almonds, quartered or slivered
½ cup raisins
5 bay leaves
1 egg
½ cup milk

SPECIAL UTENSIL

8″ x 8″ casserole dish

Makes 8 plates. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add bread and ½ cup milk to small bowl. Let bread soak. Peel, core, and dice apple. Mince onion. Add butter, onion, and beef to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens and beef browns. (The universe is continually expending, things are getting farther apart from each other, hence the extra two blank lines after this paragraph.)

Add beef, onion, diced apple, soaked bread, lemon juice, curry powder, pepper, salt, turmeric, almonds, and raisins to casserole dish. Evenly insert bay leaves, tips standing up, throughout casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Remove casserole dish. Add egg and ½ cup milk to mixing bowl. Beat with whisk. Ladle egg/milk mix over casserole. Bake for another 15 minutes or until golden brown. Bobotie goes well with rice. However, it goes really, really well with chutney. Omit the chutney and you’ll risk a visit from the culinary police.

TIDBITS

1) There are no gourmet restaurants in space. There once was that orbiting fast-food restaurant called The Outer Limits. It relied heavily on drive-through traffic. It failed. You probably never heard of it.

2) New owners reopened the eatery. This time they added space ports, hoping to get dock-in business from space-shuttle pilots and passengers to and from the International Space Station.

3) It failed as well. Indeed, it never opened. Costs did in this project. The parts necessary to building an up-to-date space docks surprised the eager entrepreneurs. And my gosh, the transportation costs for the materials. Out of this world! Who knew that NASA charged so much to blast off with even the most modest kitchen appliances?

4) Oh, and here is a tip for would be extraterrestrial restarauteurs. When hiring a private company to carry your culinary supplies to your orbiting eatery, don’t hire the shuttle on a mileage basis. The cost will eat you alive. Overtime wages for the shuttle operator are pretty horrific as well.

5) Anyway, there’s a hamburger joint, up there that is fully equipped and ready for business. Make an offer to the bank holding the mortgage. you’ll find it quite easy to work with.

6) I fear I’ve dwelt too long on the costs of operating an off-Earth restaurant.. There are benefits as well. You really don’t need a refrigerator. Simply place your meat, ice cream, etc. outside. The food won’t go bad; the temperature is nearly absolute zero out there. Your restaurant being the only thing of any size in the neighborhood will generate enough gravitational field to carry the food all with it.

7) I do recommend putting all your food in a giant mesh. Picture this. You’re trying to bring inside a rack of ribs. Instead of hooking the ribs you poke them away. The ribs fall out of orbit and hurtle to Earth. Except the ribs don’t make it to Earth. They crash into a satellite on the way down.

8) Only it’s not just any satellite. It’s the one people use to transmit photos of babies, kittens, and puppies to each other. Deprived of their cute pictures, billions of distraught people get into their cars to get the one thing that can ease their pain, a really good burger. And if billions of people turn on their cars at once, the resulting exhaust will cover the world asphyxiating everyone.

9) Social media companies have a reserve satellite permanently on call on a launching pad for this very occasion. They can get a new satellite functioning in space in fifteen minutes.

10) People will probably realize this. Enough of them to avoid suffocating the world. Probably, but do you want to take that chance? So for the future of all of us, please place your out-of-shuttle food in a secure mesh net. Thank you.

11) In the meantime, those wishing to enjoy a fine meal far from the madding crowd, might want to consider heading north, way north. The culinary scene in Svalbard, Norway is vibrant despite being in the land of four-month-long nights and having only 2,642 people. Indeed, the town of Longyearbyen has thirteen fine restaurants. According to TripAdvisorTM, the highest rated restaurant is Huset. It’s also the northernmost gourmet restaurant.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: absolute zero, African, bobotie, Chef Paul, cookbook, culinary, De Lancey, Earth, entree, gourmet, Granny Smith, gravitational field, ice cream, Longyearbyen, Norway, Paul, recipes, restaurants, satellite, South African, Space Shuttle, suffocating, Svalbard, TripAdvisor | Leave a comment

Boeuf Bourguignon

Posted on April 28, 2016 by pauldelancey

French Entree

BOEUF BOURGUIGNON

INGREDIENTS

2½ pounds beef chuck
2 garlic cloves
1 large onion
1 shallot
1 bay leaf*
5 peppercorns*
3 sprigs fresh parsley*
1 sprig fresh thyme*
2⅓ cups red Burgundy or Pinot Noir
2 tablespoons olive oil (1½ tablespoons more later)
3 slices bacon
2 carrots
12 pearl onions
1½ tablespoons olive oil.
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
1½ tablespoons parsley flakes
⅓ cup brandy
2 cups beef stock
12 new (young, small) potatoes
1½ tablespoons (optional garnish)

* = bouquet garni

SPECIAL UTENSILS

kitchen string.
Dutch oven
colander
sonic obliterator

Makes 8 bowls. Takes 8 hours.

PREPARATION

Cut beef into 1½” cubes. Mince garlic cloves. Dice onion and shallot. Crush peppercorns with kitchen mallet. Tie parsley sprigs and thyme with kitchen string. Insert bay leaf and peppercorns into bundle of parsley and thyme. This bundle is called bouquet garni.

Add beef cubes, garlic, onion, shallot, bouquet garni, Burgundy, and 2 tablespoons olive oil to large mixing bowl. Stir with spoon until well blended and beef is completely coated. Cover and let marinate for 3½ hours.

While beef marinates, cut bacon into ½” by 1″ strips. Slice carrots into ½” cubes. Peel pearl onions. Peel potatoes. (This is easier if you boil them for one minute and let cool.) Add bacon and 1½ tablespoons olive oil to Dutch oven. Heat oil using medium-high heat. It will be hot enough when a bacon strip will sizzle when added to Dutch oven. Carefully add bacon strips to oven. Sauté at medium-high heat or until bacon starts to brown. Stir frequently. Remove bacon to plate with a paper towel on it. Keep bacon grease and oil in Dutch oven.

Add pearl onions to Dutch oven. Sauté at low heat for 5 minutes or until they are completely brown. Gently and occasionally stir onions with spoon to ensure even cooking. Remove pearl onions and set aside.

Remove beef cubes from mixing bowl. Keep the remaining marinade. Pat beef cubes dry with paper towel. Discard bouquet garni. Strain marinade through colander. Keep the marinade. Discard the solids left in the colander

Add ¼th of the beef cubes to Dutch oven. Sauté at medium-high heat for 4 minutes or until beef is completely browned. Stir frequently. Sauté the rest of the beef in batches. This gives them enough room for even browning.) Add all sautéed beef cubes to Dutch oven. Add pepper, salt, and flour. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes or until flour blends completely with marinade. Stir gently and frequently.

Add brandy to Dutch oven. Simmer on low heat for 5 minutes or until brandy evaporates. Occasionally scrape brown bits from the bottom and ladle them over the beef cubes. Add marinade from mixing bowl and beef stock. Cover. Simmer on low heat for 2 hour or until beef cubes start to become tender.

Add potatoes and enough water to cover them to a separate pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to medium-high and boil for 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Drain.

Add reserved pearl onions, carrot, and bacon strips. Cover Dutch oven again. Simmer at low heat for 35 minutes or until beef cubes are tender. Skim off any fat from surface of stew. Bring stew to boil using medium-high heat. Serve immediately with potatoes. This dish is also great the next day.

TIDBITS

1) This is a truly tasty dish. It also takes a lot of time. So, if your sweethearts complain about this dish in any way or for any length of time be it only a muttered, “Bah,” zap them with your sonic obliterator. The relationships weren’t meant to be.

2) However, if they say your boeuf bourguignon is the best dish ever or if they say it is even tastier than you are good looking which they thought wasn’t possible, then you have keepers.

3) However, if a sweetheart makes this dish for you and it is good, real good, then you have met an angel on Earth. Propose marriage immediately.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: angler, beef, boeuf bourguignon, bouquet garni, bourguignon, brandy, Burgundy, Chef Paul, cookbook, Earth, Eat Me, entree, French, hunks, Lutheran, marriage, Pinot Noir, recipes | 2 Comments

Spanakopita

Posted on April 18, 2016 by pauldelancey

Greek Appetizer

SPANAKOPITA

INGREDIENTS

8 green onions
2 medium brown onions
2 pounds fresh spinach
½ cup butter (½ cup more later)
½ cup olive oil
3 eggs
1 pound feta cheese
2½ tablespoons dill
¼ teaspoon salt
2½ tablespoons lemon juice
½ cup butter
1 pound phyllo pastry sheets

SPECIAL UTENSILS

9″ x 12″ casserole dish (You’ll need to trim the phyllo sheets if they’re larger than the casserole dish.)
sonic obliterator.

Makes 24 triangular spanakopitas. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Dice green onions and brown onions. Remove stems from spinach. Add ½ cup butter, olive oil, green onions, and brown onions to pan. Sauté at medium-high for 5 minutes or until onions soften. Stir occasionally. Add spinach. Sauté at medium heat for 10 minutes or until spinach is completely soft and liquid is nearly gone. Stir frequently. Remove from heat and let cool

While spinach mixture cools, add eggs to mixing bowl. Beat eggs until well blended. Add eggs, feta cheese, dill, salt, and lemon juice. Whisk thoroughly. Add sautéed spinach to bowl. Blend thoroughly with fork. Add ½ cup butter to small pot. Melt butter using low-medium heat. Stir frequently. Remove from heat.

Carefully lay out a phyllo sheet in casserole dish . Gently brush melted butter onto phyllo sheet. Repeat until half of the phyllo sheets are in the casserole dish. Gently spread spinach mixture onto top phyllo sheet. Carefully–yes carefully and gently are definitely les mots juste for this dish–lay on phyllo sheet onto spinach mixture. Gently brush phyllo with butter. Place another phyllo sheet in the casserole dish. Gently brush sheet with butter. Repeat until all the phyllo sheets are gone.

Bake at 350 for 30-to-40 minutes or until top layer of casserole is golden brown. Cut casserole into 12 3″-wide squares. Cut each square along a diagonal to make two triangles. Serve to appreciative, remaining guests.

TIDBITS

1) It takes a lot of care to make spanakopita. Those phyllo sheets can tear apart faster than a politician’s campaign promises. Or you rip the sheets while brushing them with melted butter. You’re already fit to explode faster than a land mine. Then some oaf makes a comment like, “I don’t like these thingies. They taste too spinachy.” What is the proper response for the gauchery?

2) Eliminate the miscreant. You don’t need that negativity.

3) But how?

4) My favorite weapon of choice is the sonic obliterator. The serious home chef simply cannot afford to be without this implement. Not only does it dispatch crabby diners to the nether world, but as the name suggests, it obliterates all evidence of the evil eater. Law enforcement rarely pursues murder charges when it cannot find the body.

5) Sadly, most supermarkets and department stores do not carry sonic obliterators. You have to buy them on-line. The best sale prices tend to occur on Black Friday, the week before Christmas, and just before Valentine’s Day.

6) Culinary statisticians have also found a high correlation between forgotten birthdays and anniversaries; so remember your sweatheart’s important days.

7) May I suggest a personalized plate? If your loved’s birthday is June 12 and you got married on November 19 get a license plate with, “J12N19″ on it.

8) You could also tattoo the same sequence of letters and numbers on your forearm. However, you really should make sure your wedding is rock solid. Because your next sweatheart will surely want you to remove the old flame’s important days from your arm. This is painful, more painful than the original tattoo. Then you’ll need to re-ink your skin with your new boo’s dates. Which is painful.

9) Heavens to Betsy, if your subsequent relationships goes south and your find a third, fourth, or fifth love, you will be in a world of constant pain. Loves hurts, but tattoo removals hurt even more. Monogamy does have its advantages.

10) Don’t write sweatheart in a love note.. The correct spelling is sweetheart. Calling your soul mates “sweatheart” might get in trouble, especially if they are stay-at-home chefs and possess a sonic obliterator. Having multiple soul mates can also get you zapped into nothingness.

11) As you can see, life is fraught with perils. You might get obliterated for dissing someone’s spanakopitas You could get annihilated for misspelling a term of endearment. This is why it is so important to follow proper etiquette. This is why your grammar-school teachers drilled your constantly in correct spelling.

12) Be kind. Be careful. Stay alive.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: anniversaries, appetizer, birthdays, Black Friday, chef, Chef Paul, Christmas, cookbook, etiquette, feta, Greek, hunks, law enforcement, love, Lutheran, negativity, pain, phyllo, recipes, sonic obliterator, spanakopita, statisticians, tattoos, Valentine's Day | Leave a comment

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