Posts Tagged With: baked beans

You Know You Want to Party With Me

Salt pork, hard to find in the wild

I spent much of the morning shopping at three grocery stores. First one, Grocery Outlet was missing all sorts of basic foods. The next one, Stater Brothers did not have salt pork. They were, however, selling a dozen eggs for $9 – $10. It’s the age-old story, an item cannot be produced in one place then every store or supplier across the universe holds back supplies and jacks up prices for months to come.

I then went to Sprouts, They were selling eggs for $4.70, so I bought them there. In your face, Stater Bros. However, they didn’t have salt pork either.

I need salt pork to make homemade Boston Baked Beans for a party. I’ve looked online for an hour or two. Only two possible stores in the country. I couldn’t find a good source online.

Thanks, Obama.

Then, I spent hours fixing problems in finances.

That’s it.

You know you want to party with me.

 

– 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: about me, my life | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Full English Breakfast (Fry Up)

British Breakfast

FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST
(Fry Up)

INGREDIENTS

1 15-ounce can baked beans*
1 large tomato
4 pork sausages, breakfast sausages, or bangers
4 slices bacon**
6 mushroom caps
2 slices black pudding (optional)***
1½ tablespoons olive oil
2 slices bread
2 eggs

* = Try to use Heinz beans. Heinz is really popular in England
** = back bacon, pork belly, or regular bacon
*** = can be found online

SPECIAL UTENSILS

3 pans and 1 pot (Not really special, but you’ll need 4 of them.)
sonic obliterator (Now this is a truly special kitchen utensil. Once you get one, you’ll wonder how your ever managed to do without one.)

Serves 2. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut tomato into 4 slices. Add beans to small pot. Simmer at low heat until the sauce that comes with the beans thicken. Cover and reduce heat to warm or lowest setting. Stir enough to prevent burning.

Poke sausages with fork or toothpick. (This keeps the sausage juices from building up and coming out in a hot jet.) Add sausages to 1st pan. Fry sausages at medium heat for 15 minutes or until completely browned. Turn enough to ensure even browning. Turn enough to prevent burning Cover and reduce heat to warm..

While sausage fry or warm, add bacon to 2nd pan. Fry bacon for 3 minutes or until it reaches your desired level of doneness. Turn occasionally to ensure even browning. Cover and reduce heat to warm. Remove from heat and set aside Turn enough to prevent burning.

While sausages simmer, add mushrooms to 2rd pan. (The one that had the bacon.) Sauté at medium-high heat for 2 minutes or until they turn brown. Turn enough to keep from burning. Remove mushrooms from heat. Add black pudding to 3rd pan. Sauté at medium heat for 3 minutes or until it both sides turn crispy. Flip once. Remove and set aside.

Add 1½ tablespoons olive oil to 3th pan. Heat at medium heat until tiny piece of bread in the oil starts to dance. Add bread slices. Sauté for 2 minutes or until both sides are crispy and golden brown. Flip once. Remove and set aside Add eggs to this, the 3rd pan. Fry eggs until they are done to your liking. Remove from heat and set aside. Add tomato slices. Reduce heat to low-medium. Sauté for 2 minutes. Flip once.

Add equal amounts of everything to 2 serving plates. Use sonic obliterator on anyone gives you any guff at all during the cooking or the presentation. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) People ask me, “How does one start writing again while suffering from writers’ block?”

2) Go find your muse. Of course, you might just discover that your muse has gone on a drunken bender.

3) So you go on a pub crawl to find her. At each stop, you ask the bartender if he’s seen your muse.

4)“I’m not telling you a thing,” says the bartender, “until you’ve ordered a drink.”

5) So, you order and down a whiskey.

6) “Your muse was here ten minutes ago,” says the man serving drinks, “but she went to the next bar up the street.”

7) So you enter the next bar. That bartender also refuses to talk unless you’ve bought a drink. You order another whiskey. The barkeep informs you that she moved onto a bar two blocks west. “She was a with a gal called Betty.”

8) And so it goes. You drink a whiskey at every bar you go into. The bartender states that you just missed her, but you can find at a bar that’s really not very far away. And so you stagger doggedly on after her.

9) Hours later, your muse parts company with Betty. But the muse conquers bar after bar.

10) Eventually, you give up. You decide to head home. In your car.

11) A vigilant traffic cop notices you weaving from lane to lane. He pulls you over.

12) “But officer,” you hear yourself saying, “I’m a writer. I was looking for my muse, but she was on a pub crawl.”

13) The officer sneers. “Like, I haven’t heard that one before.”

14) This is why writing is not as easy as some people think.

 

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

Boston Baked Beans

American Appetizer

BOSTON BAKED BEANS

INGREDIENTS

1 pound great Northern beans
8 cups water
1 medium onion
5 ounces salt pork
¼ cup brown sugar
⅓ cup molasses
2 teaspoons dry mustard
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt

Makes 9 bowls. Takes overnight to soak plus 6 hours to cook.

PREPARATION

Add beans and water to large pot. Soak overnight. Reserve liquid from pot. Mince onions. Cut salt pork into ½” cubes. Add all ingredients including reserved liquid to slow cooker.  (If you discarded the liquid, add 5 cups water.) Use low setting to Cook for 6 hours or until beans are tender. Stir before serving.

TIDBITS

1) Beans are fairly round. Bowls are completely round. The Britons of King Arthur’s time ate beans before battle. Beans gave them strength and courage.

2) Though not the element of surprise. The many toots that came of Arthur’s knights always gave them away, no matter how carefully they concealed themselves in ambush. But the armies of King Arthur’s day generally eschewed–not that the illiterate warriors of the day would have known a two-dollar word as eschewed–complicated tactics such as ambush. Generally they came together and bashed the heck out of each other until one side gave way.

3) Naturally, King Arthur’s knights wanted to eat strength-and-courage-giving beans before combat for the knights eating the most beans, bashed the most enemy knights. In turn, these knights got the most gold, land, and the best castles from a grateful and victorious Arthur.

4) All knights wanted this. This meant they had to get the biggest bowl of beans. Soon combat broke out among King Arthur’s fighters. His warriors began to die off before they even saw the enemy.

5) The only way to have equally large bean bowls was to have only one bowl for all the knights, one they ate from at the same time. Naturally, this bowl had to be enormous. An enormous round bean bowl requires an enormous round table to support it. This is how the Round Table came about.

– 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

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