Posts Tagged With: American

Crispy Fish Scallopini

Posted on November 25, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Entree

CRISPY FISH SCALLOPINI

INGREDIENTScrispycodscallopini

2 garlic cloves
1 pound cod fillets or other white fish
¼ cup flour (1 more tablespoon later)
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon sage
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chicken broth
1 tablespoons Chardonnay or white wine
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon drained capers
1 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil (up to 2 teaspoons more)
¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon parsley

Serves 3. Takes 50 minutes.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

cooking mallet

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves. Pound cod fillets to ¼” thickness with clean cooking mallet. If you don’t have such a cooking tool, try putting a few sheets of wax paper on top of the cod and whack away with a blunt instrument.

Combine ¼ cup flour, pepper, sage, and salt in mixing bowl. Dredge the cod fillets through this mixture. Cut cod fillets into 6 cutlets. Put chicken broth, Chardonnay, water, lemon juice, capers, 1 tablespoon flour, and garlic in second mixing bowl. Mix sauce thoroughly.

Melt butter in no-stick frying pan. Cook on medium high and add 1 tablespoon olive oil. Place as many flour/pepper coated fillets as possible into frying pan. Cook for up to 5 minutes on each sides or until cutlets turn golden brown and crispy. Add 1 teaspoon olive oil to the pan each time you cook another batch of fillets. Remove cod.

Pour broth/caper sauce into frying pan. Heat on medium high for 1 to 2 minutes or until sauce boils and thickens. Pour sauce over cod cutlets. Sprinkle Parmesan and parsley over the cod.
TIDBITS

1) Early humans were hunter-gatherers. They liked crispy mastodon steaks. Baby-back mastodon ribs were a particularly liked delicacy.

2) Where delicacy meant a rib or hunk of meat cut of the mastodon with flint, then thrown on to the fire. If the went out early, the meat was cooked on the outside and left rare on the inside, trapping the juices inside. Thus, the culinary technique of searing was born. Well done, mastodon chefs! Well okay, except for the omnipresent layer of ashes on the meat. Mesquite wood provided the tastiest ashes. To this day, mesquite wood is the choice for all serious barbequers. I told you the prehistoric era was a hotbed of culinary innovation. Oh, and sometime the fires were put out by sand.

3) Indeed, a revolutionary recipe by Ogg, a caveman states:

Our People Entree

MASTODON STEAKS

INGREDIENTSmastodonhunt

1 mastodon
many pieces of mesquite wood
many handfuls of sand

Serves many. Takes time.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

flint

PREPARATION

Skin mastodon with flint. Cut out chunks of meat with flint. Pile mesquite near a likely place for a likely lightning strike. Wait for lightning strike. Throw mastodon chunks on fire. Have sex with wife. If the love making is quick, the meat will be rare. If the foreplay is slow and sensitive, the meat will be well done. Put out fire with sand.

4) The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD wiped out the towns of Pompeii and Heraclaneum. However, a survivor, Quintus Cato, gleaned some good out of the bad days. He thought, “What if I flattened some fish with a mallet, breaded it, and gingerly dipped the fish into the edges of the lava flow just long enough for the sand to run through this timer? Why, I’d have some great crispy fish scallopini!”

5) Many fishermen met their end falling into the hot lava while making this dish. The lava method of preparing fish rapidly fell out of favor. People hated Quintus. His family was shunned.

6) Then in 112 AD, his grandson redeemed his family’s honor when he thought, “Oh feck, why not use mesquite wood or even wood from the olive tree?” And so, crispy fish scallopini became easy to make. We are forever grateful.

 

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

Texas Corny Dogs

Posted on November 15, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Entree

TEXAS CORNY DOGS

INGREDIENTStexascornydog

Enough vegetable oil to cover hot dogs in deep fryer, maybe 4 cups (¼ cup more later)
½ cup flour
2 cups yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
2½ tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
1⅓ cups milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
12 ice cream sticks
12 hot dogs

Makes 12 corny dogs. Takes 40 minutes.

SPECIAL UTENSIL
The squiggle says, “I’ll be at the music stage”
empty Mason jar (or any jar taller than a hot dog)
deep fryer
tongs

PREPARATION

Add enough vegetable oil to deep fryer to cover hot dogs. Set temperature to 350 degrees. Add flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and sugar to large mixing bowl. Blend with whisk or fork. Add eggs, milk, and ¼ cup vegetable oil. Whisk vigorously until well blended. Pour batter into Mason jar. (Refill as necessary.)

Put ice cream stick into hot dog. (Leave enough stick out to make a good handle.) Dip hot dog in batter. Put hot dog in deep fryer. Repeat for all hot dogs. Deep fry hot dogs at 350 degrees for 5 minutes or until golden brown. (You might need to do this in batches.) Remove with tongs.

TIDBITS

1) Mustard squiggles are an ancient form of communication dating back to the American Civil War. Union generals communicated with their vast armies via telegraph, a system subject to frequent breakdowns. So, Northern officers often sent instructions via mustard squiggles on strategically placed hot dogs and corn dogs. Unbeknownst to the North, General Lee’s cryptographers had cracked the mustard code. Union generals marveled how Lee always anticipated their moves. However, the Southern string of victories ended when Northern mathematicians came up with an early version of the Enigma machine. The South would never decipher another message. The Confederacy would lose the war. Mustard code only lives on at county fairs.

 

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

Fried Green Tomatoes

Posted on August 21, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES
With Dipping Sauce

INGREDIENTS – DIPPING SAUCEFriedGreenTomatoesCornmeal-

2 stalks green onions
⅔ cup Dijon mustard
½ cup mayonnaise
⅓ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon white pepper

INGREDIENTS – TOMATOES

4 large or 2 pounds green tomatoes*
½ tablespoon salt (1 teaspoon more later)
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup flour
¾ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
up to 2 cups vegetable oil

* = WARNING. This really is a lot of work if you’re using many tiny green tomatoes. If it takes more than 8 green tomatoes to make 2 pounds, consider cutting the amount of ingredients in half. Certainly, you’ll only get to eat only 1 pound of tomatoes this way, while people living in the land of big tomatoes get 2 pounds. However, you won’t be muttering to yourself and looking in the garage for an axe. Alternatively, move to the land of the big tomatoes. Oh, and leave your axe behind.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

electric skillet
3 mixing bowls

Serves 8. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes to 2 hours 30 minutes depending on the size of the tomatoes. Bigger tomatoes take less time. They really do.

PREPARATION – DIPPING SAUCE

Mince green onions. Add dipping sauce ingredients to mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Cover and chill until tomatoes are deep fried.

PREPARATION – TOMATOES

Cut tomatoes into ¼” slices. Pat tomato slices dry with paper towel. Put slices on wire racks over plates. Sprinkle slices evenly with ½ tablespoon salt. Let sit for 30 minutes to draw out water.

While tomato slices sit, add cornmeal, flour, pepper, and 1 teaspoon salt to large, second mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Divide this cornmeal/flour mixture onto 3 plates. (This will keep the cornmeal/from clumping up from the moisture of buttermilk laden tomato slice.) Add buttermilk to third mixing bowl. Dip tomatoes slices in buttermilk. Dredge buttermilk-covered slices one at time through cornmeal/flour mixture until they are well coated.

Set skillet to 375 degrees. Add enough oil to coat tomato slices to skillet. Oil will be hot enough when a tiny bit of flour added to skillet will dance in the oil. Add as many tomato slices as possible to skillet without them touching each other. Fry 3 minutes on each side or until they turn golden brown. (Cooking time tends to go down a little with each successive batch.) Additional batches might be necessary. Drain on paper towels. Serve with dipping sauce.

TIDBITS

1) Tomatoes can be cut with a regular knife. But not with any uniformity. Sure, you’ll get the occasional .25″ thick slice, but more often than not you’ll get slices with widths of .28″ or even .35″. However if your neighbors know that your make half-inch wide slices, you will be shunned.

2) In cases like these, it’s best to bolt all the doors and pull down all the shades until you have gotten rid of your deformed tomato slabs. Thieves know that houses with drawn shades and bolted doors mean that desperate knife-wielding, tomato-disposing folks are at a home and leave them at home. So when you leave the homestead, bolt your doors and draw their shades. Thieves won’t know if you’ve stepped out or are destroying culinary crimes. They won’t take the chance.

3) So don’t slice tomatoes with a knife. Then with what? A mandoline. This kitchen device makes uniform tomato slices. Now you can raise your shades and go out into your anal retentive, tomato-loving neighborhood. Be accepted, even.

4) How did the mandoline get started? Renaissance mandolin players loved sliced tomatoes. But the knives way back were even less precise than the ones we use today. Thick-tomato-slice shame ran rampant. Frustrated mandoliners took to smashing their tomatoes with their mandolins. This is how pasta sauce got invented. This is how spaghetti with marinara sauce came about. This is how Italy became the culinary capital in the world.

5) Folk music became popular in America during the 19th century. Folk guitarists took over the role of pasta-sauce makers. However, wooden acoustic guitars were amazing fragile. Just a few tomato smashings would break them. So, the pasta-sauce industry invented the sturdy electric guitar. Those things could smash tomatoes forever.

6) In 1968, a word-changing event occurred. The band Iron Butterfly released the song “In a Gadda Da Vida.” It was great. It was immensely popular. Rock bands started earning big bucks playing music of all things.

7) Rich electric guitarists gave up making pasta sauce. Italian restaurants all over the world were in danger on closing. But they didn’t, Mandy Linne, lead singer for Beefsteak had a drug-induced vision. “Why not insert a blade into a fixed surface, couple that with an adjustable upper surface, slide the tomato along the adjustable surface until it meets the blade resulting in uniform slices?” Mandy L. passed out. Her idea did not. We are living in a golden age of uniformly sliced tomatoes.

– 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Codfish Cakes

Posted on August 17, 2016 by pauldelancey

British Entree

CODFISH CAKES

INGREDIENTSCodfishCakes-

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

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Beef Jerky

Posted on August 1, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

BEEF JERKY

INGREDIENTSBeefJerky-

1 pound flank steak, London broil or round steak
¼ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon pepper (Freshly ground is best)
¾ teaspoon liquid smoke
6 tablespoons soy sauce
5 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar

Serves 4. Takes 13-to-20 hours.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

wire rack
baking sheet

PREPARATION

Slice beef across the grain into strips ¼” thick. Add all other ingredients to large mixing bowl. Mix ingredients with whisk until well blended and brown sugar dissolves completely. Add beef strips to bowl. Mix by hand until strips are well coated. Cover bowl or put in large, sealable plastic, bag. Place in refrigerator for 8-to-12 hours. Stir at least once.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees. Remove meat from marinade and pat dry with paper towels. Put wire rack on top of baking sheet. Place marinated strips on top of wire rack. Do not let strips touch each other. Bake at 160 degrees for 5-to-7 hours or until strips are ready. Strips will be ready when jerky is dry enough to easily tear off a piece, yet will not snap when bent. Preserve jerky strips from air and humidity by storing them in mason jars or sealable plastic bags.

TIDBITS

1) Origami flourished in Texas during the dark, final months of the Confederacy. The Union blockade ships had deprived the state of all sorts of fun things: fine linen, playing cards, refrigerators*, baseball bats, anything that reeked of fun. All they had left was paper. Which was used for spitwads and even sent to the front lines, where they proved utterly useless in thwarting the bluecoat advance. Soon however, the thriving art colony of Tyler, Texas experimented with making animals out of paper. The Texas Art of Origami was born. Drovers, far from sources of paper, turned to making thin strips of cooked beef for their origami material. And so, beef jerky was born.

2) *Culinary historians are at a loss to explain these apparent artifacts in the Texas of 1865.

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

Paul De Lancey Dares Donald Trump to Debate

Posted on July 3, 2016 by pauldelancey

Mr. Donald Trump,

I am challenging you to a debate. Your path to the White House is through me and the Bacon & Chocolate Party. Since this vibrant expression of democracy is my idea, the debate will be at a button2Mexican restaurant within twenty miles of Poway. You, as my esteemed opponent get to choose which Mexican restaurant. The winner of this debate gets to debate Ms. Clinton.

The gauntlet has been thrown. I await your response.

Bacon & Chocolate Party

President: Paul R. De Lancey
Vice President: Candace C. Bowen

And now a message from Ms. Bowen,

Information on Bacon & Chocolate Party thoughts and goals.

– Paul R. De Lancey
Future president of the United States of America

– 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: Bacon & Chocolate, humor, politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fish Sticks

Posted on April 23, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Entree

FISH STICKS

INGREDIENTSFishSticks-

1 pound cod or pollock
2 eggs
½ teaspoon grated lemon rind
¼ teaspoon salt
1⅓ cups panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
no-stick spray

SPECIAL UTENSIL

baking sheet

Makes 24 fish sticks. Takes 30 minutes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Fish sticks imitating a doughnut

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Put cod and ice water in bowl. Put bowl in refrigerator until oven is ready.

Drain water from bowl. Pat fish dry with towel. Cut cod into sticks 3″ long and 1″ wide. Add egg to mixing bowl. Beat eggs with whisk until well blended. Add lemon rind and salt to mixing bowl. Whisk again. Immerse fish sticks in egg/lemon rind mix until well coated. Add panko to second mixing bowl. Dredge coated fish sticks through panko.

Spray baking sheet with no-stick spray. Arrange fish sticks evenly on baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for about 12-to-15 minutes or until fish sticks obtain the desired level of crispiness.

TIDBITS

1) Oral tradition has Lucy, the world’s first human asking her husband, Oldivai George for a doughnut. George didn’t understand this craving; he didn’t have the doughnut-needing gene, the one mutation that would make him fully human.

3) But he was a devoted husband. He searched near and far, in this universe and in the parallel one where socks missing from our dryers would eventually end up. After many moons, he admitted defeat and came home with a wooly mammoth.

4) Lucy put her hands on her hips and glared. “A mammoth is not a doughnut. It is not even a nut.” “What is dough?” asked George. Lucy didn’t know. Agriculture hadn’t been invented. Neither had culinary schools. The couple went doughnutless. So did their offspring for thousands of generations. In 885 Bjorn Fisk of Norway invented the lutefisk doughnut. It was not a great success for Bjorn; he was burned alive. Then in the mid 18th-century, Elizabeth Gregory, perfected the flour doughnut. Doughnut makers have led long lives ever since.

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

Fake News Sites

Posted on April 3, 2016 by pauldelancey

“Obama and Trump Have Seen Satellite Photos of Uranus”Uranus3

“Governor Albondigas Legalizes Open Carry For Dogs”

“Governor Burger Cuts Funding For Accordion Classes”

Hot, even incendiary headlines you betcha. Ones that make you angry, make you forward the post to your friends who forward them to their friends. But are they real?

No, they’re from fake news sites. Some of them are clearly satirical sites such at The Onion. Others are what as know as “clickbait” sites. Every time you click on them, information is gathered about you. This information is then sold to advertisers. Unsettling stuff indeed. Here is a list of fake news sites. Some are clearly labelled as fake or satirical, others are not.

Call The Cops
Empire Herald                                                                                    NASA is showing Uranus to the world
Empire News
Empire Sports
Free Wood Post
Global Associated News (MediaFetcher.com)
Huzlers
MediaMass
Naha Daily
National Report
NewsBuzzDaily
News Examiner
Newswatch28 (now Newswatch33)
Now8News
Satira Tribune
Stuppid
The Borowitz Report
The Daily Currant
The Lapine
The Onion
The Racket Report
The Reporterz
The Spoof
The Stately Harold
Weekly World News
World News Daily Report

Any site that appears to be a legitimate American news site, but with .com added to the end. An example could be, ABCnew.com.co. However, sites that end with co.uk are from Britain.

The first title is made up, but President Obama and Mr. Trump probably have seen satellite photos of Uranus.

– 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: humor, politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rabbit Race Cars Dessert

Posted on February 26, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

RABBIT RACECARS

INGREDIENTSRabbitRacecars-

food dye vial
4 TwinkiesTM
4 PeepsTM
4 mini white fudge or yogurt covered pretzels
16 mini OreosTM

Makes 4 desserts. Take 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Carefully use the food-dye vial to make a number on the front and back of the Twinkie. Cut out a 1″ wide section from the middle of a Twinkie. The cut should go most of the way to the bottom. Put Peep in cut out. Put white fudge pretzel in front of Peep. Take 4 mini Oreos apart. Place the halves with the white frosting, frosting side inward, against the two lengths of the Twinkie. Repeat for the remaining Twinkies. Be sure to eat a rabbit car before the whirlwind of little ones descends.

TIDBITS

1) It is little known beyond the Culinary Art Critics Guild (CACG) that food-dye art (FDA) almost conquered the art world in 1647. FDA began when Kurt Vurgyiks of Prague painted Czech frat boys throwing pledged nobles from the Holy Roman Empire out a castle window. Chef Vurgyiks was making his new creation, Rabbit Coaches, for dinner when he saw two bodies hurtling down past his window. He grabbed his dyes and working super fast–he had to, bodies plummeting past a window last maybe one second, tops–painted the whole event on the kitchen wall.

2) Everybody loved the rabbit coaches which have remained stupendously popular ever since, changing name only to rabbit racecars in 1972 to honor Robert “The Rabbit” Olson winning the Indianapolis 500. But wait! There’s more. All the castle nobles loved Chef Vurgyik’s painting. Soon, all Europe went FDA mad. It was the best of food-dye art and dessert times.

3) It was the worst of food-dye art and dessert times. The Holy Roman Emperor took offence at the killing of his pledges; he was known to hold grudges. He ordered the execution of the Czech frat boys for their fatal prank; then as is now, fraternity hazing was frowned upon.

4) The Czech fraternities rallied around their condemned brothers and declared independence from the empire. The emperor didn’t like this either. His army of Italian frat brothers invaded the fledgling Czech nation. The bloody frat squabble spilled all over Europe when people realized that the Czech fraternities were protestant and the Italian fraternities were Catholic.

5) Perhaps a quarter of the people in the war-torn regions died in the thirty-years of unceasing fighting. As a further bummer, food-dye art was banned in the conflict-ending Treaty of Westphalia. I told you the emperor could hold a grudge.

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

Steak Diane

Posted on December 28, 2015 by pauldelancey

American Entree

STEAK DIANE

INGREDIENTSSteakDiane-

1½ pounds beef tenderloin, rib eye, or flank
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
2 shallots
¼ cup cognac or brandy
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons parsley

Makes 6 plates. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Slice tenderloin into 36 strips. Rub pepper and salt into tenderloin. Let sit for 10 minutes. Add butter to pan. Melt butter using medium heat. Stir frequently. Add as many tenderloin strips to pan as will fit in a single layer. Sear tenderloin using high heat for about 1 minute until strips are completely brown on bottom. Flip slices over and sear other side. Remove tenderloin from pan and set aside. Remove and set aside melted butter.

Mince shallots. Add shallot, cognac, and Worcestershire sauce to second pan. Sauté at medium heat for 2-to-3 minutes or until liquid has been reduced by half. Stir frequently. Add lemon juice, parsley, and melted butter from first pan. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes or until sauce thickens. Stir occasionally. Add tenderloin strips to plates. Ladle sauce over tenderloin slices. Guests who ooh and aah the loudest get the most strips.

TIDBITS

1) Steak Diane is often prepared at restaurants by lighting the alcohol in it. The flames burn off the alcoholic content while preserving the taste. Diners ooh and aah over the pyrotechnics.

2) The waiters who prepare this dish for you at your table are highly trained. Except, of course, for the ones without eyebrows. They are new.

3) Restaurants also have overhead sprinkles and fire extinguishers handy. Most homes do not. This is why this recipe is prepared without flames. Too dangerous.

4) Unless you are faced with a ravenous, blood-thirsty intruder. In that case, invite him to the kitchen for steak Diane. Use a liberal amount of cognac. Encourage the thug to take in the wonderful aroma of the steak strips. Then, pow, set the entree and the brute on fire with a propane torch. The thief will flee and you’ll have a nice, impromptu feast. Invite your friends over. Share your adventure and your culinary creation with them. Life is good.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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

Categories: cuisine, humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.