Posts Tagged With: archers

Strawberry Bundt Cake

Posted on November 14, 2024 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

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STRAWBERRY BUNDT CAKE

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INGREDIENTS – CAKE
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1 pound fresh strawberries (1 ounce more later)
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoons baking soda
3¼ cups flour
¾ teaspoon salt
⅔ cup butter, softened (2½ tablespoons more later)
3 eggs
1½ cups sugar
½ tablespoon vanilla extract (½ teaspoon more later)
⅔ cup vegetable oil
1 cup whole milk (2½ tablespoons more later)
2 drops red food coloring gel
no-stick baking spray
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INGREDIENTS – GLAZE
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1½ ounces fresh strawberries
2½ tablespoons butter, softened
1¾ cups confectioners’ sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2½ tablespoons whole milk
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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electric blender
electric beater
10″ bundt pan
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Serves 12. Takes 3 hours.
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PREPARATION – CAKE
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add 1 pound strawberries to electric blender. Puree strawberries. Add baking powder, baking soda, flour, and salt to small mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add  ⅔ cup butter, eggs, sugar, ½ tablespoon vanilla extract, vegetable oil, and 1 cup whole milk to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add pureed strawberries and red food coloring gel. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended.
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Gradually add in the dry mix from the small bowl into the liquid mix of the large bowl. Mix with electric beater set on low until just combined into batter.
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Generously spray bundt pan with no-stick baking spray Pour batter into bundt pan. Level batter with spatula. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Use butter knife to loosen cake from the bundt pan Let cake cool for 15 minutes. Invert cake onto plate. Let cool completely before icing.
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PREPARATION – GLAZE
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Add 1½ ounces fresh strawberries to blender. Puree strawberries..Add pureed strawberries, 2½ tablespoons butter, confectioners’ sugar, and ½ teaspoon vanilla extract to medium mixing bowl. Mix with electric beater set on low until well blended. .
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Gradually add 2½ tablespoons whole milk or until glaze thickens and is just pourable. Pour glaze evenly over the cooled cake. Allow glaze to drip down the size. Let set for 5 minutes before serving.
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TIDBITS
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1) Strawberries were known as wartsberries in France in from 1178 to 1347.
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2) All Medieval peasants suffered greatly from warts.
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3) Their wart-free neighbors shunned them. “Ew,” said the nearby farmers.
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4) Downcast, dispirited, and depressed, the wart-ridden peasants joined the King’s army in hopes of campaigning abroad.
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5) What luck!. The Hundred Years War erupted, started even, in France in 1347.. Off went the English to France.  Archer Jack Strawberry wasn’t even on French soil for six minutes when he stumbled, falling face first into a wartberry patch.
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6) When he arose and drew himself up to 90 percent of his full height, his archer companions gasped. His warts has completely disappeared. “By St. George’s darned socks, it’s a miracle,” said Elric Sod. And with Elric’s impimatur, the entire English army rolled and rolled into the wartsberry patch. Grateful archers, men at arms, and knight renamed the wartberry to, strawberry in his honor.
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7) I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it happen, but when an army miraculously loses all its warts, it becomes world beaters. “God is clearly on our side,” said Sod. “Who can stand against us.”
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8) And indeed, no French army could stand up to the wartless English.
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9) Then everything changed. In 1428, the Archangel Michael appeared to Joan, a peasant botanist living in the town of Do Re Me. “Joan, take your botanical knowledge to King Charles VIII; as he surely has none.”
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10) So Brainy Joan made her way to the royal court. “Your majesty,” said she. “To defeat the cursed English, you must destroy every strawberry patch in France. Without strawberries, warts will once more sprout like weeds upon the soldiers. Their morale will plummet and your army will vanquish them time after time. Impressed by Joan’s piety and botanical acumen., Charles VIII did what she said. The French would evict the English for good. Brainy Joan would become Saint Joan. 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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Nidi di Rondini

Posted on March 7, 2021 by pauldelancey

San Marinese

NIDI DI RONDINI

INGREDIENTS

1 12-ounce package lasagna noodles
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
⅛ teaspoon salt
⅔ cup marinara sauce (⅓ cup more later)
1¼ cups grated mozzarella
½ pound prosciutto or deli-sliced ham
⅓ cup marinara sauce
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

SPECIAL UTENSILS

8″-x-8″ casserole dish
kitchen scissors or scissors
aluminum foil

Serves 5. Takes 1 hours 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook lasagna noodles according to directions on package. (Do not let noodles stick together. You might need to cook them in batches.) Drain noodles. Spray flat surface. Place lasagna noodles flat on flat surface. (Do not let them touch each other.)

While noodles cook, add butter to pan. Melt butter using medium heat. Gradually add in flour. Stir frequently until well blended. Gradually add milk until the sauce thickens. Stir frequently. Add salt. Stir until blended. This is the bechamel sauce. Remove pan from heat.

Pour ⅔ cup marinara sauce into casserole dish. Smooth with spatula. Spread bechamel sauce evenly over all the noodles. Sprinkle mozzarella evenly over the bechamel sauce. Place proscuitto strips over the bechamel-mozzarella lasagna noodles. (If necessary, trim or fold prosciutto strips so that they are narrower than the noodles.)

Roll up lasagna noodles so that they form a tight cylinder. Place lasagna cylinders upright and close together in casserole dish. (If necessary, place wadded-up balls of tin foil in casserole dish to keep lasagna cylinders from falling over.) Make four ½” cuts at the top of each lasagna cylinders. Pull the lasagna between the cuts down and out a bit. so that they look like rose petals.

Drizzle ⅓ cup marinara sauce over the lasagna cylinders. Sprinkle cylinders with Parmesan cheese. (Not so much that you can’t see the rose-petal design of the lasagna cylinders.) Bake for 35 minutes or until the tops of the cylinders turn crisp and golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Nidi di rondini tastes great. Anyone making this entree will be immediately be hailed as an amazing chef and host.

2) If you are up for a Nobel Prize, you would do well to serve this dish to the judges.

3) As of press time, it is not illegal to do this.

4) So, what are you waiting for?

5) Nidi di rondini comes from the great, but tiny country of San Marino.

6) Despite being the size of a rather large postage stamp (24 square miles, 61 square kilometers), the San Marinese have preserved their independence for 1,816 years.

7) The above number is accurate as of the time of writing. Please increase the above number by one for every year after 2021.

8) Anyway, how did this tiny country maintain its independence from many other countries with much bigger armies such as: the Roman Empire, the Papal States, the French Empire under Napoleon, Italy, and Hitler’s Germany?

9) Simple. As culinary historians will tell you, soldiers with red hair make the fiercest warriors in the world. San Marino has always had fighting redheads. The chefs of this happy land commemorates their heroes with these rolled-up lasagna rolls topped with marinara sauce.

10) However, the most famous fighters in the world come from Scotland. Neighboring England failed for centuries to conquer the Scots, The English armies quailed, broke ranks and fled in terror whenever they caught sight of all that Scottish red hair.

11) The only success the English had came from their archers. But, of course, the archers were to far away to see the hair color of the Scottish pikemen.

12) One wonders why the English army never colored their hair red. Then the Scottish warriors would have fled whenever came in contact with the English.

13) What if? What if all the countries of the world made their soldiers die their hair?

14) All armies fear fighting fierce redheads. With all armies comprised of gingers, no army would dare attacking any other.

15) Peace would break out.

16) There you have it. Dye the hair of all combatants red.

17) I see a Nobel Peace Prize in my future, as long as I remember to serve nidi di rondini to the judges.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Kourma Shurpa (beef vegetable soup)

Posted on May 20, 2015 by pauldelancey

Uzbek Soup

KOURMA SHURPA
(beef vegetable soup)

INGREDIENTSKourmaShurpa-

1¼ pounds tri-tip or chuck
3 russet potatoes
2 medium carrots
1 green bell pepper
2 garlic cloves
2 medium onions
2 tomatoes
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ tablespoon cilantro
½ teaspoon coriander
¾ teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons dill
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt or salt
1½ quarts water
2 teaspoons parsley

Makes 10 bowls. Takes about 1½ hours.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Cut tri-tip into ½” cubes. Peel potatoes. Cut potatoes into fourths. Cut carrots into round ½” slices. Remove seeds from bell pepper. Dice bell pepper, garlic, onions, and tomatoes.

Add tri-tip cubes and oil to Dutch oven. Stir occasionally. Sauté for 4 minutes on medium-high heat or until cubes brown. Add garlic and onion. Sauté for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add bell pepper, carrot, tomato, cilantro, coriander, cumin, dill, parsley, pepper, and salt.

Add water. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to warm and simmer for 30 minutes or until carrot becomes tender. Stir occasionally. Add potatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes or until potato fourths are tender. Stir occasionally. Garnish with parsley and serve to guests who will be agog with your knowledge of Uzbekistan.

TIDBITS

1) Uzbek is an anagram for bezku.

2) Kudzu is an extremely fast growing vine that’s spreading all over parts of the southern United States.

3) Bezku is a fast growing beet that’s growing all over Uzbekistan.

4) For the longest time, the Turkmen government was aghast about the proliferating bezku.

5) Then came last month’s announcement that Beetball would be added as a sport for the Summer Olympics. Now athletes all over the world are clamoring for beets.

6) Beetball is played very much like volleyball but with a beet instead of a volleyball. So, tough agile hands are a must for the successful participant.

7) Oh, also good eyesight, excellent eyesight, superb eyesight. You really don’t want to get hit in the nose by a beet hurtling toward you at 80 miles per hour, because you didn’t spot it in time.

8) The best beetball players hail from Mongolia. Genghis Khan trained his warriors to dodge arrows by hurling beets at them. Sure, he could have trained his fighters by loosing arrows at them, but men with arrows in their heads or heads invariably prove to be slow learners.

9) That reminds me, the phrase, “That beats all,” really came from “That beets all,” and is a deadly serious statement. Nothing beats beets for tough army training.

10) Genghis Khan and the succeeding khans of Mongolia nearly conquered Europe in 1241. No European army could withstand the Mongols. The Mongol horsemen, toughened by months of beet throwing, easily dodged the arrows of Russian, Hungarian, and Polish archers.

11) It looked really grim for the nascent French pastry industry.

12) Then suddenly in 1242, the fiercesome, all conquering Mongol armies withdrew to Mongolia. Their khan, Ogadai, had tied and the Mongols true to their tradition, had returned to their homeland to elect a new leader. How did Ogadai die?

14) Well, Sven Svenson of Sweden poisoned the Mongol leader with lutefisk. Sven knew that just as no Western army could stand up to the Terror of the East, no man could survive eating lutefisk, or even smelling and looking at it. Apparently though, Sven was okay with run-on sentences.

15) Indeed, lutefisk warfare is the primary reason the tiny Viking armies consistently overwhelmed the much larger armies of Ireland, England, France, and Germany. We hear the expression, “God save us from the fury of the Norsemen,” but it used to be, “God saves us from the horror of lutefisk.”

16) Anyway, Svenson was decapitated by the Mongols, which certainly was a bummer for Sven.

17) The United States and the European Union still permit the making and even the selling of lutefisk to adults and innocent children. Why? Why? Because we all know how lutefisk saved Western civilization in 1241. There is even the suspicion that Western armies maintain vast stockpiles of lutefisk, but no one will talk.

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

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