Posts Tagged With: Africa

I Fight Santa Claus

Posted on December 25, 2024 by pauldelancey

Man of music, man of rage

Sorry this post had to be filed via a time machine, but I got into a fistfight with Santa Claus. He came down the chimney in the wee hours of Christmas morning. Harry Truman was still president when the chimney was last cleaned. So he got a facefull of dirt and twigs, dust, spider webs, and grimes all over his once red and white suit.

Did he like the fact that there was a fireplace screen and a sofa blocking the chimney’s exit?

No, he did not.

Indeed, he said, “What sort of an aadvark’s butt hole puts a screen and a sofa to block my way? And where the feck are my milk and cookies? This house blows dead bears!”

I drew myself to 90 percent of my full height. “Yeah well, at least I didn’t let my reindeer bully Rudolph and exclude him from their reindeer games, you fat, judgmental bastard. Also, I don’t enslave elves to make toys for me, you ball of Arctic pestilence.”

Then words were said that couldn’t be taken back. Fists were raised. Punches were thrown. I out pummeled fatty, having practiced boxing a little bit in college. However, the Jolly Recluse of the North Pole sure could take a punch. That huge belly of Old Saint Nick absorbed anything I could throw at him. The fight went on for hours until Mr. Claus realized he was behind schedule.

He pointed a finger at  me. “Thanks to you, kids in Sub-Saharan Africa won’t get their presents until noon, Inconceivable, you whining pustule.”

I sneered. “Yeah, your wife living in Barbados, well I’ve had her. Hasta la vista, Santy.”

I will always wonder if I could have handled our meeting better. Ouch, my ribs! The Clausorino sure possessed a mean right jab. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take a long, hot bath with Epsom salts.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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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You Need to See A Mama Elephant and Her Baby Running

Posted on April 19, 2024 by pauldelancey

Life can be hard. Life can be stressful. The world can be way too peoply. We want to chuck our cares away and run free in wide open spaces. But we can’t. But others can, like this momma elephant and her baby elephant in Africa. Go, elephants, go. Run for joy for all of back here. Wee hee!

You need to see #37

 

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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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Cheese Lasagna

Posted on March 29, 2024 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

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CHEESE LASAGNA

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INGREDIENTS – PASTA
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3 cups flour*
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
½ cup water or more
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* = More might be needed for dusting, texture.
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INGREDIENTS – CHEESE
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3 garlic cloves
1 white onion
2½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1¼ cups shredded Parmesan cheese (2 tablespoons more later)
2¼ cups ricotta cheese
⅓ cup red wine
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 26-ounce jar spaghetti sauce
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon basil
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon oregano
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon thyme
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INGREDIENTS – ASSEMBLY
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2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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9-inch x 13-inch baking dish
no-stick pastry mat
rolling pin
hand crank pasta machine
cooking scissors (If your baking dish is 8-inches x 8-inches, for example)
no-stick spray
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Serves 12. Takes 3 hours 10 minutes.
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PREPARATION – DOUGH
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Combine 3 cups flour, eggs, egg yolk, and water into large mixing bowl. Knead with hands for 15 minutes. Make a ball of the mixture. It should be only slightly sticky and should just be able to come off your hand. If some of the ball sticks to your hand, then add a bit more flour, mix again, and try the new flour. If the flour ball is powdery, it is too dry. Add a bit more water, mix again, and try the consistency of the next ball. There may be a number of these iterations but it must be done. Divide dough ball into 3 equal mini-dough balls. Wrap mini-dough balls with plastic wrap and let sit in refrigerator for 1 hour.
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PREPARATION – CHEESE
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Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mince garlic cloves and onion. Add mozzarella, Parmesan, and ricotta cheeses to medium mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended
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Add onion, garlic, and olive oil. to frying pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add red wine, spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes, basil, bay leaf, Italian seasoning, oregano, pepper, salt, and thyme. Cook on medium heat for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
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PREPARATION – PASTA
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This preparation needs to be done 3 times. Dust no-stick pastry mat with flour. Remove 1 dough ball from refrigerator. Keep remaining dough balls in fridge until needed. Put this dough ball on pastry mat. Dust rolling pin. Roll out dough into oval shape 5½” wide and ¼” thick. (Anything thicker inhibits dough from going through hand-crank pasta machine.)
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Use pasta machine’s thickest setting. (#1 on mine.) Hold dough vertically and straight as possible over pasta machine’s roller. Turn crank slowly to feed dough oval through roller. Fold resulting dough sheet in half. Cut about ¼” off each side to make it rectangular and thus easier to feed into roller. (This also makes for uniform dough sheets.) Run this folded sheet through roller.
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Dust dough sheet. Set pasta’s setting the next narrower setting. (#2 on mine.) Again, hold dough sheet vertically and straight as possible over pasta machine’s roller. Repeat process, selecting a narrower setting each time, until final pasta sheet is about 1/16″ thick. Repeat entire pasta-sheet preparation until all dough is used. Trim pasta sheets to be 13″ * 4½”. The cutoff pieces of dough can be used to make another sheet.
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PREPARATION – ASSEMBLY
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Grate 2 teaspoons Parmesan. Use no-stick spray on baking dish. Put a layer of lasagna, 2 side-by-side noodles on the dish. If the noodles happen to be longer than your baking dish, snip off the excess length with your scissors. In this recipe, 6 noodles will make one lasagna dish with 2 layers of meat sauce. Reserve about ½ cup meat sauce. Divide remaining meat sauce and cheese equally between layers.
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Cover this 1st layer of noodles with a layer of meat sauce and a layer of cheese. Add a 2nd
layer of noodles, meat sauce, and cheese. Add a 3rd layer of noodles. Spoon just a little meat sauce atop the top layer along with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese. Put glass lid or aluminum foil on top of baking dish. Cook lasagna in covered baking dish in oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Cook uncovered for an additional 15 minutes or until bubbly. Remove and let sit for 5 minutes more.
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TIDBITS
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1) Lucy Olduvai of Olduvai Gorge was the world’s first human. Her parents were almost human. And oh my gosh, her brother Ogg, older than her by two years, was oh so close to be human. But with Lucy, they had finally got birthing a human right.
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2) But, sad to say, Little Lucy was a brat. She taunted her sibling mercilessly. “You’re subhuman,”  The sensitive Ogg ran crying to Mama Olduvai. Mama Olduvai got cross with Little Lucy. “Go play with that herd of mammoth cattle until you’re ready to apologize to your brother.”
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3) Oh, tidbit 3) proves that the nearly humans and first humans had the power of speech and in fact, could speak English. Well done, you.
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4) Anyway, proud Little Lucy wasn’t ready to apologize. So, she spent a lot of time poking the cattle. Then she started pulling. Fortunately for the ascent of humanity, she didn’t start with a bull. She began with a cow and got milk. “Wow, this tastes great! I call it milk.”
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5) Then she spotted a field of wheat. The equivalent of a light bulb turned on her first-human brain. “I’ll bet if I can get the cattle to stampede over the wheat field, they’ll trample and crush the wheat into flour.*”
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6) * = First Human speech was much complex than was first suspected, constructing complicated sentences with commas and everything.
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7) So, Little Lucy, ran back to her family as fast as her first-human legs would carry her. “Mama, Mama, I’ve discovered milk and wheat. We can evolve.”
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8) Mama Ogg scowled. “Evolution can wait. Are you ready to apologize to Ogg?”
“I am. Sorry Ogg.”
“It’s okay,” said Ogg, “Do you think we could make lasagna? I’ve had visions of it in my sleep?”
“Well,” said Little Lucy, “we need culture to make cheese.”
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9) So, the Olduvai Gorgers invented cave painting and five-act plays. But this was the wrong culture for making cheese out of milk. The next day, however, they discovered the right culture.
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10) The Gorgers, being hunter-gathers, par excellence, gathered eggs, garlic, cloves, onions, grapes, olives, tomatoes, basil, bay leaves, peppercorns, thyme, and salt. With their almost-human synapses firing something fierce, they eventually uncovered the secret of making tasty cheese lasagna. Life was truly good for the Gorgers.
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11) Until the mammoth-cattle herd migrated out of Africa. Oh no! No herd, no milk. No milk, no lasagna. “What’s the point of evolving?” said Papa Ogg, “if we can’t dine on lasagna?”
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12) “Let’s follow the mammoth cattle,” said Little Lucy. “Let’s follow the most important ingredient in lasagna.” so they did. And this is how humanity spread over the entire planet. Yay.
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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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Pork Medallions

Posted on March 6, 2024 by pauldelancey

American Entree

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PORK MEDALLIONS

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INGREDIENTS
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1½ pounds pork tenderloin
¼ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon sweet paprika or paprika
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon rosemary
1 garlic clove
1 small onion
1½ tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
⅔ cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons parsley
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SPECIAL UTENSIL
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non-stick skillet or cast-iron frying pan
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Serves 4. Takes 40 minutes.
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PREPARATION
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Cut pork tenderloin into 12 equal slices or medallions. Pat medallions dry with paper towels. Add oregano, sweet paprika, pepper, and rosemary to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Rub onto medallions. Dice garlic and onion.
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Add olive oil and 6 medallions to skillet. Sauté each medallion for 3 minutes at medium-high heat or until golden brown. Remove medallions and set aside. Repeat for 2nd batch of medallions, although cooking times might decrease. Remove these medallions and set aside.
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Keep heat at medium high. Add butter to skillet. Whisk butter and use spoon to remove brown bits. Add garlic and onion. Sauté for 1 minute. Stir frequently. Add broth, stirring gently. Bring to boil. Boil for 1 minute or until sauce thickens. Spoon the juice in the pan over the medallions. Garnish with parsley.
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TIDBITS
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1) The humble aardvark is a mammal that burrows at night. It hails from Africa and is the only living species of the order Tublidentata. I’ll bet you didn’t know that last bit.
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2) On the other hand, a medallion is a large medal or something resembling a large medal such as a wall panel. It can even be some dish that resembles a small medal, such as a pork medallions. Pork medallions can be eaten. Metal medallions cannot. Score one for pork medallions. Aardvarks don’t eat pork medallions. They eat ants. They burrow at night and we have come full circle.
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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, observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Malva Pudding

Posted on August 21, 2023 by pauldelancey

South African Dessert

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MALVA PUDDING

(Malvapoeding)

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INGREDIENTS – CAKE
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2 tablespoons butter, melted
⅔ cup white sugar
3½ tablespoons apricot jam
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ cup whole milk
¼ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups flour
no-stick spray
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INGREDIENTS – SAUCE
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1 cup evaporated milk or heavy whipping cream
½ cup brown sugar
5 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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electric beater
8″ * 8″ baking or casserole dish
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Serves 8. Takes 1 hour.
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PREPARATION – CAKE
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add 2 tablespoons melted butter and sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with electric beater set on medium until butter and sugar become creamy. Add apricot jam, baking powder, eggs, milk, and salt. Mix with beater set on medium until mixture becomes fluffy. Gradually add flour, mixing all the while until well blended. Spray baking dish with no-stick spray. Pour batter into baking dish. Bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees or until toothpick inserted into middle comes out clean. Poke holes in cake with fork.
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PREPARATION – SAUCE
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About 10 minutes before cake is done, add all sauce ingredients to large pan. Cook at medium heat for 5 minutes or until sugar and butter melt, the mixture becomes smooth, and bubbles start to form. Remove from heat and cover. Ladle warm sauce evenly over cake. Let cake sit for 20 minutes to give the cake time to absorb the sauce. Cut cake into 12 pieces. Goes well with vanilla ice cream.
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TIDBITS
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1) Malva puddings are square. Keyboard keys are square. Keyboard keys were inspired by malva puddings. Because everyone loves malva puddings.
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2) Most malva pudding is to be found in South Africa. But there can’t be many South Africa keyboard users and professional typists in comparison to the rest of the world.
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3) That’s true now, but in the first year in the existence of the square keys, 98% of the square-key enthusiasts were South African.
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4) Indeed, these squarekeyers so loved their malva pudding that they made their keys from fresh malva. As one could imagine, typing with fresh malva was quite squishy. Globs of malva pudding got into everything, particularly the keyboard. Typing became impossible.
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5) Everyone knows the surrender ceremony ending the war with Japan was signed on the Battleship Missouri. This document was supposed to have been composed on a square-key typewriter. But the fresh malva keys gummed up the typewriter. No more malva typewriters, no Japanese surrender. No surrender would have meant more atomic bombs, perhaps a bloody invasion of Japan.
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6) Which was bad.
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7) Fortunately, Corporal Lucy Dubai, reserve typist second class, had her personal round-key with her. Her roundkeyer was made of metal with glass caps.
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8) Sure, these keys didn’t give off the same pleasing scent of the square malva keys, but they worked. General MacArthur had Corporal type up the surrender document. The relevant dignitaries signed the surrender terms that very day.
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9) Grateful soldiers and marines, scheduled for the invasion of Japan. Lucy Dubai became a wildly popular pinup girl in barracks all over the Pacific Ocean. Her roundkeyer replaced the malvakeyer as the number-one typewriter pinup. Round keys would dominate the world for decades.
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10) Culinary anthropologists general credit Lucy* of Olduvai Gorge with inventing the first roundkeyer. So, you’d think that round keys would dominate the world to the very moment that you’re reading this tidbit.
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11) However, much of humanity left Africa after Lucy’s invention. Those who went to Europe would favor square keys. This bias can be found in their DNA. However, the tribes who stayed in Africa and those who trekked to Asia preferred round keys. Waves of squarekeyers and roundkeyers would eventually wash up on the shores of North America causing tension and conflict in the United States that haunts us to this very day.
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12) Then how did squares conquer the modern keyboard world? It has something to do with a bar bet at the Blue Armadillo in 1993. There, now you know.
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13) * = Corporal Lucy Dubai could trace direct descent from Lucy of Olduvai Gorge.
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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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Corned Beef Cakes

Posted on November 12, 2021 by pauldelancey

Sierra Leonean Entree

CORNED BEEF CAKES

INGREDIENTS

1 pound potatoes or yams
1 teaspoon salt (1 teaspoon more later)
1 small onion
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon parsley
1 teaspoon pepper
1 12-ounce can corned beef
1 egg (1 more egg later)
3 tablespoons milk
1½ cups bread crumbs
1 egg
6 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil (2 tablespoons per batch)

Makes 12 cakes. Takes 1 hour 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Peel potatoes. Cut each potato into 4 pieces. Add potato pieces to large pot. Add 1 teaspoon salt and enough water to cover potato pieces. Bring water to boil using high heat. Boil for 15 minutes or until potato pieces are soft. While potato bits boil, dice onion. Remove pot from heat. Drain water. Mash potatoes with potato masher or fork. Add onion, 1 teaspoon salt, cayenne pepper, parsley, pepper, and corned beef. Mix with whisk until well blended.

Add 1 egg to small bowl. Beat with whisk or fork. Add milk. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add egg/milk mixture and corned beef/mashed potato mixture to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended. Make 12 patties.

Add bread crumbs to a 3rd bowl. Add 1 egg to a 4th bowl. Beat egg with whisk or fork. Add patty to bowl with egg. Coat both sides of patty with egg. Add egg-coated patty to bowl with bread crumbs. Dredge patty through bread crumbs until patty is completely covered. Repeat for remaining patties.

Add 2 tablespoons peanut oil to pan per batch. Heat oil using medium-high heat. Oil is hot enough when a breadcrumb added to the oil starts to dance. Carefully add 4 bread coated patties to the hot oil. Sauté patties for 1 minute using medium-high heat or until patties start to blacken on the bottom. Carefully flip patties over; they can be crumbly. Sauté for 1 minute more or until the new bottom side of the patties start to blacken. Remove patties from heat. Drain on paper towels. Repeat for remaining batches.

TIDBITS

1) The continents and other bits of land are constantly in motion.

2) Does this mean you’re going to get whiplash just by sitting in a chair watching TV in the den? Or will your television suddenly separate from the rest of the den and rapidly recede into the distance? And what about the giant chasm between you and the TV?

3) What if you are near sighted and suddenly your program “FriendsTM” is on a screen 100 yards away and you need to get your glasses and they are in your bedroom which is on the other side of a 100-yard-wide chasm and although you were a crackerjack long jumper in college and could leap 26 feet, you still know that your longest jump is still 274 feetshort of the width of the chasm and you are so distraught that you’ve just composed your longest run-on sentence ever?

4) What if you’re on the famous pier in Santa Monica and California’s entire coast falls separates from the rest of the continent and plunges into the ocean and you can’t help wondering if you had locked the front door or not?

5) What if you’re driving on a country road and all of a sudden the ground beneath you lurches forward so much so that you exceed the speed limit by 200 mph? A traffic cop pulls you over. You tell the officer, “The movement of the Earth’s crust made me go this fast”. The cop shakes his head. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

6) Well fret not, dear friend, the previous four tidbits are currently quite unlikely. The Earth’s plates currently move at a rate of about ¼” a year.

7) How long would it take for your television to move 100 feet away?

8) 400 years. The sitcom “Friends” would be over by then.

9) Let me further calm you down. Your TV and your chair are almost certainly on the same Earth plate. So now matter where your huge bit of the planet moves, you always be the same distance away from your show. You’ll not need to get your classes. Any 100-foot chasm. will be dozens of miles away.

10) So how do we know all this? How did the study of plate tectonics come about?

11) In 1946, Kadie Mansara of Makeni, Sierra Leone, served this entree, Corned Beef Cakes, for her little boy, Patrick. Now Patrick liked to play with his food. His three corned beef cakes were originally all next to each other. However, the little scamp moved the corned beef all over the plate until they were positioned as shown in the above photograph. Ma Kaide gazed at the new configuration

13) She had an epiphany. Great sections of the Earth must move in the same way. We don’t see the movement, but it happens. Slow continental movement would explain mountains, earthquakes, even why the west coast of Africa looks like the east coast of South America. Mrs. Mansaray would go on to found the prestigious Sierra Leone Plate Tectonics Institute. 40 years later she received a Nobel Prize for her ground-breaking research. Now you know.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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

Tarte Flambee

Posted on November 5, 2021 by pauldelancey

French Entree

TARTE FLAMBEE

INGREDIENTS – DOUGH

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2 cups flour (3 more tablespoons later)
½ tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon sugar
½ tablespoon olive oil
½ cup warm water
3 tablespoons flour

INGREDIENTS – TOPPINGS

½ pound bacon
¼ pound Gruyère cheese
1 medium onion
¼ cup crême fraiche
¾ pound fromage blanc or cream cheese
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt

SPECIAL UTENSILS

pizza stone or baking sheet
parchment paper
mandoline (optional)
sonic obliterator (Go get one)

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

Add pizza stone to center rack in oven. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Add 2 cups flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add oil and water. Knead by hand until well blended and dough forms.

Dust large flat surface with 3 tablespoons flour. Divide dough in half. Roll out dough half until you get a round pizza crust 10″ across. Put parchment paper on baking sheet. Put pizza crust on parchment paper. Repeat for the 2nd dough half.

PREPARATION – TOPPINGS

Dice bacon. Grate Gruyère cheese. Cut onion into slices ⅛” thick. Add crême fraiche, fromage blanc, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to 2nd mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Spread crême fraiche/fromage blanc mix evenly over pizza crusts. Leave a ½” border around the edges. Sprinkle bacon evenly over cheese mix. Sprinkle onion over bacon and crême fraiche. Sprinkle Gruyère cheese over everything.

Carefully, carefully (use oven mitts) slide pizza crusts and the parchment paper underneath them onto preheated pizza stone or baking sheets. Bake at 500 degrees until puffed, golden brown, and crispy. Serve immediately.

Zap unappreciative guests with sonic obliterator. You don’t need negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe uses a pizza stone.

2) The earliest human, Lucy of Olduvai Gorge, did not have a pizza stone. So, she did not make this recipe. If only she had had even a baking sheet. But she did not. No Tarte Flambee for Lucy.

3) Her friend Charlie Olduvai had a football his mom had made from the pelts of little animals. Lucy always promised to hold the pelt football while he ran up to kick it. But Lucy always pulled the pelt ball away at the last moment and Charlie would fall onto his back.

4) Charlie Olduvai grew tired of his mistreatment. So did his parents who never liked Lucy’s parents anyway. “They’ve ruined football for us until the twentieth century. Bah, the slackers will never make anything out of themselves.”

5) So the disgruntled Olduvais left. Many gorge dwellers followed the well-liked family. These first humans thought they’d only walk for a day or so before settling down beside a new stream near a nice plain filled with lots of juicy animals to eat.

6) Then George Gorge piped up and said he wanted a pizza. Now, the little group did carry all the ingredients for pizza for humanity has always hungered for pizza. So they looked for holes in cliffs that would double as a pizza oven. They found dozens of such ovens.

7) But no pizza stones or baking sheets So they marched on. The little walk turned into months, years, and even millennia. Thus, began humanity’s great migration out of Africa.

8) Then the early humans invented the wheel. Brilliant minds soon–thousands of years–made pizza stones. People could finally make pizza! Eat pizza! Huzzah!

9) The Stone Wheel clans appointed wisdom keepers to tell succeeding generations the way to make pizza stones. So for century upon century peoples could feast on mastodon pizza.

10) Then humans, too hungry for mastodon pizza toppings, killed off all the mastodons No other pizza toppings would do. Pizza fell out of favor. There was no long a need for pizza stones, no need to pass on the knowledge to make them. Humanity’s ascent stagnated for millennia.

11) Don’t let this happen again. Buy a baking sheet! Buy a pizza stone! Do it now!

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Braised Chicken From Ivory Coast

Posted on May 18, 2021 by pauldelancey

Ivorian (Ivory Coast) Entree

 

BRAISED CHICKEN

 

INGREDIENTS

1 bouillon cube, Maggi* vegetable, other vegetable, or chicken
2 teaspoons ginger
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 chile peppers
3 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2¼ pounds boneless chicken breasts or thighs
3 tomatoes
1 medium onion

* = It’s almost impossible to overstate the prevalence of Maggi’s bouillon cubes in Africa.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

mandoline
outdoor grill

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Crush bouillon cube. Add crushed bouillon cube, ginger, pepper, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Mince chile peppers and garlic cloves. Add minced chile pepper and garlic. Mix again with fork until well blended. Add lemon juice and vegetable oil. Mix again with fork until well blended. This is the marinade, Cut chicken into 3″ cubes. Add chicken to marinade. Toss chicken cubes until they are thoroughly coated with marinade. Let marinate in refrigerator for 1 hour. (Keep the marinade.)

While chicken marinates, use mandoline or knife to cut onion and tomatoes into ¼” slices. Cut slices in half. Preheat outdoor grill to 300 degrees. Add chicken cubes to grill. Turn chicken cubes every 3 minutes until no longer pink inside. Add equal amounts of chicken, onion and tomato to each plate. Drizzle with remaining marinade. Top with equal amounts of grilled chicken cubes.

TIDBITS

1) This recipe and many others tell you to cook something until its no longer pink inside. You can do this by cutting off a small bit and looking. Wouldn’t it be nicer to be able to use X-ray vision instead? Unfortunately, none of us possesses x-ray vision. But SupermanTM does. I’d bet Superman would be a great-steak house chef.

 

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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, observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pudim de Coco (Coconut Pudding)

Posted on April 12, 2021 by pauldelancey

East Timorese

PUDIM DE COCO
(Coconut Pudding)

INGREDIENTS

1¾ cups sugar
5 eggs
2 cups coconut milk
2½ tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons coconut flakes (optional)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

6-to-8 cups baking dish or casserole dish
9″ x 13″ casserole dish* (Must be longer and wider than baking dish)
sonic obliterator

Serves 6. Takes 1 hours 20 minutes plus 6 hours in refrigerator.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add sugar to pan. Melt sugar using low-medium heat until it begin to melt. Stir enough to keep sugar from burning and clumping. Reduce heat to low and continue warming sugar until it melts completely and turns a caramel brown. Stir constantly. Remove immediately from heat. (Don’t let it solidify.) Pour this caramelized sugar right away into baking dish. Smooth it with spatula.

Add eggs to mixing bowl. Blend eggs thoroughly with whisk. Add coconut milk and cornstarch. Mix with whisk until this custard becomes smooth. Ladle mixture over caramelized sugar. Put baking dish into casserole dish. Add hot water until it is 1″ high in the casserole dish. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of pudding comes out clean.

Loosen pudding by sliding spatula around the edges and, as far as possible, the bottom. Put plate on top of casserole dish. Carefully turn casserole dish and plate upside down. Tap casserole dish with knife. Say a brief prayer. Lift casserole dish. Pudding should come out cleanly onto plate. Spoon liquid caramel on plate onto the caramel already on top of pudding.

Let sit in refrigerator for 6 hours or overnight. If desired, garnish with coconut flakes. Serve to adoring guests. Use sonic obliterator on any guest who gives you guff in any way. You cannot afford to let any threat or insult to your authority as chef go unchallenged.

TIDBITS

1) Many of you would look at the picture for this recipe and declare, “Why someone has hungry. That person was too tempted by the dessert to wait for the chef to take a photo for the cookbook.” And you would be right.

2) Many others. gazing at the photo would say, “Why it looks like a tiny square was taken from a larger square. If only high school geometry had been as tasty.” And you too would be right.

3) But these reasons are not the reason this picture touches your soul so deeply, why it speaks so strongly to your innermost self, why you feel the spirits of generations after generations of primitive ancestors dating back to Olduvai George whispering in your inner ear.

4) Go back into the distant mists of time when Lucy of Olduvai Gorge, your great, great, great, great, . . ., really, really great grandmother saw dust sweeping down, down the gorge to her.

5) Then Lucy heard thundering getting ever closer.

6) She, of course, saw the dust before she heard the accompanying thunder. For light travels at 3 * 10^8 meters per second and sound at 3 * 10^3 meters per second.

7) It is doubtful that Lucy fully grasped the concept of relative velocities. Culinary scientists even discount the notion that Lucy even knew about scientific notion. It is certain, though, that either she never developed the Theory of Relativity or if she had, that she never published it.

8) Oh my gosh, while I speculated about Lucy’s scientific achievements, the dust-shrouded herd got really close. Run, Lucy, run!

9) But the soul of a lion beat in Lucy’s heart. She picked up a stone and hurled it at middle of the dusty cloud. (This is, by the way, the real genesis of the sport of baseball. Now you know.)

10) A creature in the herd shrieked in pain. The thundering stopped. The dust settled. Thousands upon thousands of panting coconut puddings became gradually clearer. “What are they?” wondered Lucy. She gazed at the dead coconut pudding. “Is it edible? I hope so. I’m ever so hungry. And all I ever get to eat are thistlewort berries. I shall eat this meat.”

12) She tore a remarkably square section out of the dead, square coco pudding and ate. She looked at what remained. The photo for this recipe bears an uncanny resemblance to what Lucy saw those millions of years ago.

13) “It tastes great,” shouted Lucy. Her tribe raced toward her. “Eat these squares, eat them. They’re ever so yummy.” And they did. They felt full for the first time ever. Even though they couldn’t articulate the concept, they just knew they had ingested sufficient caloric intake to leave the gorge, leave Africa, and spread humanity all over the Earth. It was the dawning of the Age of Humanity.

14) Unfortunately, the first humans fed themselves almost completely on herds of coco puddings, so much so that coco puddings became extinct. But the hankering for coco pudding never went away. It just went dormant for eons until the Age of Discovery started in the fourteenth century. Fueled by the need for a vegetarian version of coco pudding, European monarchs starting with Henry the Navigator dispatched fleet after fleet in search of sugar, coconut milk, and coconut flakes. They’d eventually find these ingredients. Humanity would once again live in a culinary golden age.

15) Oh, and in doing, we’d chart the entire world. And we owe it all to brave Little Lucy.

– 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zanzibar Pizza

Posted on July 2, 2019 by pauldelancey

Tanzanian Appetizer

ZANZIBAR PIZZA

INGREDIENTS – DOUGH

3 cups flour (2 tablespoons more later)
½ teaspoon salt (¼ teaspoon more later)
1 cup water
⅔ cup vegetable oil (2½ tablespoons more later)

INGREDIENTS – FILLING & ASSEMBLY

2 green or red chiles
2 garlic cloves
1 red onion
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil (1 tablespoon more later)
¾ pound ground beef
½ teaspoon curry powder
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
¾ cup shredded cabbage
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
chutney or tomato sauce as desired

SPECIAL UTENSILS

bread maker (optional)
no-stick pan

Serves 8. Takes 2 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION – DOUGH

If USING BREAD MAKER, add 3 cups flour, water, and ½ teaspoon salt to bread maker. Set bread maker to “dough” setting for 10 minutes. (IF KNEADING BY HAND, add 3 cups flour and ½ teaspoon salt to mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Add water and knead by hand for 10 minutes or until dough is smooth.) Divide dough into 6 balls. Add dough balls to shallow bowl. Drizzle ⅔ cup oil over dough balls. Turn dough balls until they are thoroughly coated with oil. Cover and let sit for 1½ hours.

PREPARATION – FILLING AND ASSEMBLY.

While dough sits, mince chiles, garlic cloves, and red onion. Add chile, garlic, red onion, and 1½ tablespoons vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until red onion softens. Stir frequently. Add beef, curry powder, pepper, and salt. Fry at medium-high heat for 3 minutes or until beef browns. Remove from heat.

Dust flat surface with 2 tablespoons flour. Add dough ball to flat surface. Flatten dough ball until you have 8 8″-dough circles. Push in edges of dough circles to make a wall high enough to prevent egg from running out. Add beef mixture equally to center of dough circles. Top beef mixtures equally with shredded cabbage. Add raw eggs equally over shredded cabbage.

Fold top and bottom of dough circles to the center. Then fold left and right sides to the center. These are the pizzas. Pinch sides as necessary to keep egg from seeping out. Add 1 tablespoon oil to large no-stick pan. Add as many pizzas as possible without having them touch each other. Cook on medium for 5 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Flip once. You might need to cook in batches. (Cooking times tend to go down with successive batches.)

Serve with chutney or tomato sauce.

TIDBITS

1) IEC, Intertemporal Enforcement Commission, is powerful. Frighteningly so. Consider the following salutary tale.

2) Around 260 AD, a Roman expeditionary discovered the island of Flutoj off the east coast of Africa. The merchants in the force waxed rapturously–I spelled it correctly on the first try; beams with pride–over the abundance of spices found on the island. Why not conquer it for Rome? It’ll be easy they said. And it was. Centurion Pomodoro won the island in a game of rock, paper, scissors.

3) The Romans named it Zanzibar after their Emperor Zanzi who loved to frequent wine bars. Within two days of the renaming of the island to Zanzibar, the British company, MarsTM, filed a trademark infringement complaint with the Intertemporal Enforcement Commission. Mars–the candy maker, not the Roman god–claimed Zanzibar was a rip off of Mars BarTM. Mars asseted that the Romans, renowned engineers, had clearly used a time machine, visited a twentieth-century candy store, saw Mars Bars on sale, made minimal changes to the name when coming up with Zanzibar.

4) How did the news of the renaming of the island to Zanzibar get back to Rome so quickly at a time of communication was limited to the speed of horses and oar-driven ships? Time machines, as well know the Intertemporal Enforcement Commission has time machines.

5) IEC ruled against Emperor Zanzibar and held a contest, So You Want to Be an Emperor? General Courgette did well on this and won the right to overthow the Emperor. And indeed, the plucky Courgette prevailed after a brief civil war marked with great slaughter.

6) This civil war proved so popular with the Roman armies that these conflicts became a weekly event. Courgette’s reign, in fact, was so brief that only culinary historians remember hir.

7)Anyway, these wars so depopulated the Roman Empire that it so fell to barbarian armies. The Dark Ages descended on Europe. People became so poor that they would have no money to spend on candy bars. People wouldn’t buy candy bars until 1932 when the Mars company made it. IEC realized it’s overreach and disbanded in 1998. We’ve fought no wars over candy ever since. Yay.

– 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: history, humor, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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