Posts Tagged With: American

Roast Chicken in Pomegranate Date Molasses

Posted on June 12, 2021 by pauldelancey

Israeli Entree

ROAST CHICKEN IN POMEGRANATE DATE MOLASSES

INGREDIENTS

½ cup date molasses or syrup* or honey
¼ cup pomegranate molasses* or cranberry juice concentrate or grenadine or lemon juice with honey
⅓ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
3½ pounds chicken thighs, thighs with legs, legs – all with bone in

* = May be found in Middle Eastern or kosher supermarkets

SPECIAL UTENSILS

baking pan
baster

Serves 6 or 1 person per chicken piece. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Add date molasses, pomegranate molasses, olive oil, and salt in large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add chicken pieces. Turn chicken pieces until thoroughly coated. Cover and marinate for 30 minutes.

Add chicken to baking pan. Ladle marinade over chicken. Roast at 425 degrees for 45 minutes or until skin is crispy and browned. Baste with juices from pan every 10 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) When I was growing up, milkmen would deliver milk to your doorstep. They also sold, eggs, butter, and cream. They saved so many trips to the store when only when of these ingredients was missing. And who wants to go to the store for just one thing when baking? When I lived in the Netherlands, the milkmen would deliver all that to your home. They’d also sell soup, jam, and beer. Yes, beer. Who wants drunk people driving to the store when their party runs of beer?

2) We really do need to bring back the American milkman. The Dutch milkman would be even more appreciated. But we need more. For how many times have you gone to the store just for flour? Just for lettuce or tomato? And especially just for one herb? We need a culinary mobile, making door-to-door delivers of: herbs, spices, and produce. We’d, of course, also want dairy products. I’d nominate any one who’d provide this service for a Nobel Prize. I can conceive of no worthier cause.

 

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: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Frito Pie In a Bag

Posted on May 25, 2021 by pauldelancey

American Entree

FRITO PIE IN A BAG

INGREDIENTS

2 green onions
1 pound ground beef
1 30-ounce can chili beans (no meat)
1 10-ounce can diced tomatoes and green chiles
6 1-ounce bags Fritos(tm)
6 tablespoons sour cream
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Serves 6. Takes 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Dice green onions. Add ground beef to pan. Fry at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until browned. Stir enough to ensure even browning. Add chili beans and diced tomatoes and green chiles. Cook at medium heat for 5 minutes or until thoroughly warmed. Stir enough to blend and keep from burning.

Cut out most of one side of each bag or simply open the bag at the top. Top the Fritos in each bag evenly with pan contents, followed by sour cream, and then cheddar cheese. Garnish with green onions.

TIDBITS

1) Frito Pie In a Bag is also known as a “walking tacos” in America’s Midwest.

2) Tacos, of course, cannot walk. Cannot. This means that at one time tacos could walk.

3) Indeed, for according to culinary archeologists, the huge hard-shell* taco grazed the Indianapolis Gorge in 3,199,978 B.C,. They proved this by unearthing the bones of a young woman, Mabel, who held a fossilized four-legged Taco.

* = Proof that tacos are meant to be crunchy.

4) Unfortunately, this discovery never became common knowledge, because the Leakys had already discovered the bones of Lucy. Lucy’s remains are 3,200,000 years old. Just 22 years older than Mabel’s, but enough to get all the glory. Now no one remembers reading about Mabel and her taco.

5) But we do recall Mabel’s taco in a way, For Mabel’s DNA got passed down from Midwestern homonids to Neanderthals to Cro Magnons, and finally to Modern Humans. Inheriting Mabel’s genes, naturally means current Midwesterners love Walking Tacos. Now you know.

 

Paul De Lancey, concerned citizen and 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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I Solve the Speeding Problem

Posted on May 24, 2021 by pauldelancey

People drive like bats out of Hell. They don’t care about the speed limit. They don’t care about the law. They don’t care about the injuries, and sometimes death, they inflict on other drive drivers.

Clearly these people are truly reprehensible, bad eggs even.

What can been done to stop these speed demons?

1) Have police issue speeding tickets. This is a good, partial deterrent. It’s main flaw is that are only so man traffic cops on the road. This leaves millions of miles of roads across our nation unpatrolled. True, a number of these cops lurk in speed traps instead of patrolling dangerous stretches of traffic. This is indeed a flaw with this deterrent, but it stills holds that there aren’t enough policemen patrolling our roads to deter the speed demons. An officer of the law who isn’t there can’t issue a speeding ticket.

2) Let the insurance companies take car of the speeders. Let them charge higher insurance rates for the lead-footed drivers. Pfft! Doesn’t work. The speeding drivers just don’t give a rip.

So, what can we do? What do the speeders care about? What will they obey?

The laws of physics.

No matter how fast you drive, no matter how determined you are, you can’t drive your car through the car or truck in front of you.

This means that if all the lanes in front of you are blocked by vehicles going slower than the speed limit, you can’t speed.

But how can we rein in the speeders?

I’m glad you asked. My solutions depend of two observations that are nearly as true as a the laws of physics.

1) A significant portion of drivers are unable to drive as fast as the speed limit if they are going uphill.

All we’d have to do is make roads that only go uphill. But this isn’t true anywhere. Phooey.

2) But there will always, always be one driver that tries to pass a slow truck. However, they will drive one mile per hour faster than the truck they are driving to overtake. Then lanes are blocked by vehicles going slower than the speed limit.

Hurrah! We are onto something here. Simply drive enough trucks everywhere to slow down all the traffic in all lanes of every single road in the country.

But how do we get enough trucks on the roads for this plan to work?

Buy them! It could be the government doing the purchasing. It could be you. Do your part!

Where do we get enough truck drivers?

Hire them! Hire the unemployed, Unemployment would fall to zero. It could be the government doing the hiring. It could be you. Do your part!

There you go. Another problem solved. You may sleep easily tonight.

 

Paul De Lancey, concerned citizen and 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: humor, observations, politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Syrian Meatloaf

Posted on April 19, 2021 by pauldelancey

Syrian Entree

SYRIAN MEATLOAF
(lahme bil sanieh)

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon butter, softened
1 large onion
2 pounds ground beef
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper or black pepper
2½ teaspoons pomegranate syrup*
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 Roma tomatoes

* = Found in Middle Easter or World supermarkets

SPECIAL UTENSILS

8″ casserole dish
mandoline (optional)

Serves 4. Takes 50 minutes

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat casserole dish with butter. Dice onion. Add beef, onion, Aleppo pepper, pomegranate syrup, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended. Add beef/onion mix from bowl to casserole dish. Smooth surface with spatula. Gently poke about 30 shallow holes in meat. Drizzle vegetable oil over meat. (The shallow holes you made let the oil get into meat.) Slice tomatoes ¼” thick with mandoline or knife. Arrange tomato slices over meat. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) 1,000,000 B.C. – 1519: Nothing happens in history on in cooking.
1519 – Conquistador Cortez brings tomatoes back to Spain. People don’t eat the pretty plants.
1595 – Europeans note that tomatoes are part of the poisonous nightshade family. The French also believe that tomatoes, pommes d’amour, have aphrodisiacal properties. Tomatoes still aren’t eaten.
1872: Tomatoes first appear in an ingredient in a American recipe for tomato chowder.
1870s: The modern American meatloaf appears on the scene.
1894: Joseph Campbell cans condensed tomato soup. This proves wildly successful.
1929-1939: The Great American Depression forces starving family to extend precious protein to great lengths. Making meatloaf ensures that everyone gets some beef. All Americans eat meatloaf.
1949: LegoTM starts producing Legos. Legos look like squares with four raised dots.
1962: Syria gains its independence. Syria starts making meatloaf. Its meatloaf squares have four raised tomatoes slices. Was this meatloaf inspired by Legos? I like to think so.

 

– 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

Matthew’s Pastrami Sandwich

Posted on April 10, 2021 by pauldelancey

American Entree

MATTHEW’S PASTRAMI SANDWICH

INGREDIENTS

8 slices rye, crusty deli bread, or French rolls*
⅓ cup Russian dressing
1½ pounds sliced pastrami**
4 slices Swiss cheese
2 cups coleslaw

SPECIAL UTENSIL***

aluminum foil

* = rye bread is by far the most popular bread for this sandwich. However, I’m listing substitutes as some people can’t abide rye.
** = This is a simple recipe, so the quality of the pastrami is particularly important.
*** = Omit this if you wish to eat a cold sandwich.

Serves 4. Takes 10 minutes if sandwiches are served cold, 30 minutes if the sandwiches are hot.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Wrap bread in aluminum foil. Bake at 300 degrees for 10 minutes. (Skip this step if you’re making cold sandwiches.) Spread Russian dressing over 2 slices. Add pastrami to bottom bread slice. Place 1 slice of Swiss on pastrami. Top with coleslaw. Complete sandwich by adding the top slice of bread.

TIDBITS

1) Look at the sandwich in the above picture. If you were to turn one of the sandwich halves upside down, you would still have a pastrami sandwich half. In fact, if you hadn’t done the flipping yourself upside down, you never would have been able to tell.

2) This very thing happened to the budding artist, Auguste Renoir. In 1859, he labored all summer painting the best pastrami sandwich the art world had seen or even would see. He painted with such style and such élan that the directors of the Escalier Galerie asked to display his masterpiece.

3) But quelles horreurs, the oaf in charge of exhibitions hung Renoir’s brilliant “Le sandwich au pastrami” upside down. None of the visiting art lovers nor any of the heads of France’s Académie Française noticed this mistake. No, not enough to articulate their artistic uneasiness. But mon Dieu, their psyches did. The viewers’ souls recoiled. The masses, without knowing why, turned away from Renoir. The painting elite also shunned the young Auguste. Renoir shook his fists at the heavens. “Bah, never again will I faithfully paint reality. Mais non, I shall quickly paint my impressions of life. Nothing more. He did and to his lasting amazement, he became one of the pillars of the impressionist movement. Now you know.

– 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

Applesauce

Posted on April 6, 2021 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

APPLESAUCE

INGREDIENTS

8 apples
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1¼ cups water
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
⅓ cup white or brown sugar

SPECIAL UTENSILS

food processor
2 mason or other airtight jars. (Enough for 4-to-6 cups.)

Makes 4-to-6 cups depending on the size of the apples.. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Core and peel apples. Cut each apple into 8 wedges. Put apple wedges, lemon juice, and water into large pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 20 minutes or until apple wedges soften and start to fall apart. Add cinnamon, ground cloves, and sugar. Stir with spoon until sugar melts completely.

Add contents of pot to food processor. Blend until you obtain you get applesauce with the consistency that you desire.

TIDBITS

1) You can see a swirl in the applesauce shown in the picture above. Doesn’t it look like a whirlpool? Can you imagine what applesauce would look like if it filled a bowl five miles wide? Poe knows.

2) For In 1841 an explosion rocked Thorvald Applesauce Factory. An avalanche of applesauce streaked down the hill in the nearby Maelström whirpool. The force of the raging applesauce combined with the centrifugal of the Maelström to combine the mother of all eddies, an out of control whirlpool that sucked all ships that came too close.

3) On of those ships was the SS Bunion. The Bunion shattered as it careened off the water walls of the eye of the massive vortex. Many died in the Maelström. Passenger Edgar Allan Poe did not. He survived by clutching to a wooden beam. Poe described his ordeal in his famous story, “Descent into the Maelström.” Poe did omit any mention of the applesauce tsunami, holding that nobody would believe it. However, the Norwegians believed and founded the prestigious Eplesaus Katastrofe Institutt to develop measures to forestall the enormous destructive power of unleashed applesauce.

– 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, humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Brown Sugar Smoked Salmon

Posted on April 3, 2021 by pauldelancey

American Entree

BROWN SUGAR SMOKED SALMON

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon dill
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 pounds salmon fillets
vegetable oil

SPECIAL UTENSILS

smoker
electric thermometer
wood chips (apple, cherry, and alder are the most popular)

Serves 6. Takes 3 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add brown sugar, dill, pepper, and salt to small mixing bowl. Blend thoroughly with whisk. This is the rub. Cut salmon into 6 fillets. Pat salmon fillets dry. Rub an equal amount of rub all over the meat sides of each fillet. Let fillets sit in refrigerator for 2 hours.

30 minutes before fillets have finished refrigerating, brush grills in smoker with vegetable oil. This prevents the fish from sticking. Preheat smoker to 220 degrees. When temperature of smoker reaches 220 degrees, place fillets meat side up on grills. Smoke salmon until its internal temperature reaches 150 degrees. It should take about 1 hour 15 minutes, depending on your smoker. The salmon fillets should be pink and flaky.

TIDBITS

1) Plates are round because alien spaceships were round. Alien UFOs were living things. Aliens conquered Earth 66 million years ago. The outer spacers treated our dinosaurs most horribly. A scant million years later the dinos formulated their plan of rebellion, “Rush ‘em, crush ‘em, chomp ‘em.” The uprising was succeeding! Hooray! All the dinosaurs looked up and did a happy dance.

3) But the huge mother spaceship, it really was a mother, beamed a huge death ray at the rampaging dinos. The ray, however, merely reflected off the rebels’ cat-like eyes, disintegrating the mother ship. Circular living bits fell to Earth. Whenever the dinos laid eggs they did so on these bits, for the smarter dinosaurs knew round things can’t grow if weighed down. Today, we weigh down our round plates with food, just in case they are spaceship babies. When we’re not using our plates, we stack them in the cupboard for the same reason. You can’t be too careful with space aliens.

– 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, humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

Posted on April 1, 2021 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

BUTTERMILK RANCH DRESSING

INGREDIENTS – MIX

1 cup buttermilk powder
2½ teaspoons dill weed
4 teaspoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion flakes
4 teaspoons onion powder
6 tablespoons parsley
2 teaspoon salt

INGREDIENTS – DRESSING

½ cup mayonnaise
⅔ cup milk
½ cup sour cream

SPECIAL UTENSIL

mason jar or other airtight jar

Makes 1⅔ cups mix. Takes 5 minutes, Mix keeps for about 6 months.
Makes 14 cups dressing (1⅔ cups at a time.) Dressing keeps for up to a week in refrigerator.

PREPARATION – MIX

Aid all mix ingredients to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Transfer to mason jar.

PREPARATION – DRESSING

Add 3 tablespoons from above mix and all dressing ingredients to mixing bowl. Stir with whisk or fork until well blended. Transfer to mason jar. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving.

TIDBITS

1) Cowboys herd cows. Playwrights write about cows. See Shakespeare’s lost classic, “Two Cows of Padua.” Buttermilkboys, however, herd buttermilk cows. Buttermilk cows give buttermilk.

2) Shakespeare is one of the very few to have made a living from writing. Indeed, even he had to take on a second job as a cow righter to make ends. A cow righter is a farm hand whose job is to right the cows that have been tipped over by hooligans during the night. You have to be quite strong to push up a tipped-over cow. Shakespeare was quite buff. A list of history’s top muscular cow-righting/playwrights also includes: Sophocles, Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, and Neil Simon.

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

Fluffernutter Sandwich

Posted on May 26, 2020 by pauldelancey

American Entree

FLUFFERNUTTER SANDWICH

INGREDIENTS

2 slices white bread
1 glop* marshmallow fluff**
1 glop creamy peanut butter

* = A precise scientific term meaning the amount of peanut butter, or fluff, that you want to spread with a knife.
** = See preceding recipe for marshmallow fluff. Or buy it at stores if you live in Massachusetts or its neighboring states. It can also found online.

Serves 1. Takes 3 minutes.

PREPARATION

Spread peanut butter on one bread slice. Spread marshmallow fluff on other. Put bread slices together.

TIDBITS

1) It takes a little skill to cut a fluffernutter sandwich in two. If you slice too slowly or press down with a dull knife, you will most likely squoosh the marshmallow fluff out of the sandwich.

2) “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” – Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

3) Isaac Newton invented the fig newton.

4) On July 18, 1673, Isaac tried to cut a fig newton in half with a dull knife. The slow impact of his knife pushed two halves apart. Figgy stuff came out of the newton pieces. “Wow,” he said, “this gives me an idea. With a big enough knife, perhaps 100 yards long and a large enough fig newton, perhaps 50 yards by 50 yards, I could propel my mansion to the moon.” Space travel looked to be a few years away.

5) But no, just a few minutes after having this brainstorm, his comely maid, Sarah Bellum, sashayed by wearing a tight-fitting dress. Sir Isaac’s blood flowed away from his brain and space travel would be forgotten for three centuries.

6) Then in 1958, Pedro Erickson, head chef at NASA’s two-MichelinTM star restaurant served fluffernutter sandwiches to the engineers. He cut a sandwich in half. The two sandwich halves moved ever so slightly apart while marshmallow fluff oozed out the cut. “Aha,” cried Peter Pepper, “we can use solid-state fuel to propel our rockets. If not with marshmallow fluff, then with something else.” And with that explosive idea, NASA’s mission to space would really take off.

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

Smoked Paprika Chicken

Posted on June 3, 2019 by pauldelancey

American Entree

SMOKED PAPRIKA CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS

2 teaspoons brown sugar
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ tablespoon garlic salt
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons sea salt
5 chicken breasts
1 bags wood chips (alder, apple, maple, olive, pecan, or walnut)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric smoker
digital thermometer (if your smoker doesn’t have one)
tin foil

Serves 5. Takes 2 hours.*

PREPARATION

Preheat smoker to 225 degrees. Add all ingredients except chicken breasts and wood chips to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until spice mix is well blended. Rub spice mix equally over chicken breasts. Add wood chips to smoker. Add spiced chicken to smoker. Smoke chicken at 225 degrees until internal temperature of chicken is at least 165 degrees. The thermometer should be inserted into the thicket part of the meat.

Check every 15 minutes. This should take 1-to-2 hours.* If you’re lucky, your smoker will be set up so that your smart phone will tell you when it’s done. Carefully remove chicken breasts from smoker, place them on a plate, cover them with tin foil, and let sit for 15 minutes.

* = Please note that the various smokers perform differently. So, check the manual for placement of chicken in smoker, cooking temperature, how to use wood chips, and other pertinent information.

TIDBITS

1) The Southern tobacco crop failed in 1858. Desperate good ol’ boys took to smoking spinach, cauliflower, and squash. These all proved to be quite distasteful failures. In 1859, Andrew Calhoun rolled paprika-spiced chicken in his cigarette papers. It tasted great. Things were fine. Then, in 1860, Lincoln ran for president on the anti-smoked chicken platform. Prominent Southerners claimed he was trying to destroy their way of life. The South seceded. But the North won the Civil War and banned chicken smoking. This is why we only smoke tobacco.

– Chef Paul

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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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